Re: SPAM from Usenet

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Bill Kelly<billk@xxxxxxx> wrote:

From: "Robert Klemme" <shortcutter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Actually, IMHO this is wrong for two reasons: first, you can read GMail
via POP or IMAP.

Oh.  Didn't know that, thanks.

 Second, GMail's spam filtering is pretty good and I believe your spam
marks train the filter.  I believe at least in theory a spam filter of a
mail provider with web access can be much better than a local filter because
there is more training input.

Haha, yes.  In theory.

But in practice why are gmailers complaining about spam
on ruby-talk?

Not working for Google I can't but guess, but my belief is that it's
one or both of:

1) Gmail's spam filtering see's the spamassassin headers added by the
gateway and uses that to augment it's own ratings. Since SpamAssassin
marks it clean, gmail thinks it is clean too.

2) Gmail believes that mail sent via a mailing list has a lower
likelihood of being spam since most lists nowadays are closed and
spammers generally don't bother subscribing and this skews the ratings
sufficiently that it isn't marked as spam.

As for training gmail, yes I do that. I can't say it really helps.
I'd say 99% of the spam which reaches my inbox is via the ruby-talk
list even though ruby-talk spam is only 1-2% of the spam in my spam
folder. Also, earlier in the thread were were told NOT to do that
because it generates problems for the list maintainer... I'm not sure
why that is true though.

For those who want to read via NNTP, couldn't they subscribe and turn
off delivery? That way they can read via news and we'd still have a
way to authenticate their posts. Also, I know the svn users list is
open, but they have a pool of mods who approve messages to keep spam
off the lists.


--
Aaron Turner
http://synfin.net/
http://tcpreplay.synfin.net/ - Pcap editing and replay tools for Unix & Windows
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin

.

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