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SpamArchive.org Launched

Posted by chrisd on from the spam-is-angry-making dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SpamArchive.org has just been launched. SpamArchive.org is a community resource that provides a database of known spam to be used for testing, developing, and benchmarking anti-spam tools. The goal of this project is to provide a large repository of spam that can be used by researchers and tool developers. In the past, there were a few small personal spam archives that were used. There was no large set of spam that could be used to test new anti-spam algorithms. Thus, developers could not sufficiently test their techniques across a range of messages. Also, the lack of a "standard" sample of spam made it difficult to effectively benchmark anti-spam tools."

17 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. What about NANAS? by tsvk · · Score: 5, Informative

    NANAS, or the newsgoup news.admin.net-abuse.sightings does just this. It is a public archive of spam which can be searched e.g. with Google Groups:

    http://groups.google.com/groups?group=news.admin.n et-abuse.sightings

    Why reinvent the wheel? Or does this new spam archive have any new functionality to offer?

  2. Re:Hard to get worked up about that by arvindn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Even I know how to buy a domain name and write a few paragraphs of text on a white background.
    But you didn't, did you?

    This is a /. worthy story?
    You're missing the point. The story is not on /. because something revolutionary has been done, but because the huge number of /. readers can get together and create a useful database. Obviously it would be no good if no one knew about it. In a sense, the story is worthy because it got on /. :) Kind of a reverse Catch-22, if you like.

    What you can do:
    • Help them implement their automated spam review scripts. As with any project, they need volunteers.
    • Make sure you send them a copy of all the spam you receive. From their page:
      SpamArchive.org's efficiency is proportional to the amount, quality, and variety of spam that is provided. End users can forward known spam to submit@spamarchive.org.
  3. NANAS Google Archive by Ricardo+Dias+Marques · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, there is already a pretty large Email and USENET Spam archive at the NANAS (news.admin.net-abuse.sightings) newsgroup.

    You can check the Google Groups archive

    You can read the NANAS charter at http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/nana/charter/nan as.html

  4. spamarchive.com by philj · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've owned spamarchive.com for ages.

    Want it? - I have no use for it.....

  5. Whois.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    says:
    Domain Name: SPAMARCHIVE.ORG
    Owner, Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact:
    Guru Rajan (ID00024772)
    11475 Great Oak Way
    Suite 210
    Alpharetta, GA 30022
    us
    Phone: +1.6789699399
    Email: guru.rajan@ciphertrust.com

    http://www.ciphertrust.com introduces itself as:

    Protect Your Email Gateway
    Anti-spam and email security for the enterprise

    CipherTrust has integrated defenses for all email application-level threats into one, comprehensive device. Our IronMail appliance protects enterprise email systems such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise against viruses, spam, and intruders, and provides message privacy and policy enforcement.

  6. Re:Hard to get worked up about that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    SpamArchive.org's efficiency is proportional to the amount, quality, and variety of spam that is provided. End users can forward known spam to submit@spamarchive.org.

    I expect they mean efficacy.

  7. Spam archive and stats by minesweeper · · Score: 4, Informative
    If you're looking for 5+ years of archived spam and plots of spam volume versus time, check out this guy's site.

    His page of graphs shows the exponential growth of spam over the past few years.

  8. Re:Database? by stevenp · · Score: 2, Informative

    The learning mechanisms for detecting spam, like the Bayesian classification require a large amount of messages to build a good spam detection profile. The average 500 message JunkMail folder is not big enough for the purpose.

  9. Not intended purpose by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Informative

    This isn't like Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse or some other spam *solution*. It's intended to test to see what percentage right antispam tools get right -- false positives and negatives. It's useless (at least directly) to end users.

    So unless your antispam tool breaks on some names in personalized letters, I would think that it's okay.

    --
    May we never see th
  10. Re:So... by Arker · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you want to get a lot of spam to test your filters with, just check the archives of NANAS on Usenet. What precisely this new thing does that a spider of that archive couldn't give you I don't know.

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  11. Are they legit? by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Informative
    Typical of a Slashdor story. Lot's of people asking questions when they can find out the answer and post it in the same amount of time.

    According to WHOIS, "spamarchive.org" was registered by one Guru Rajan, who has an email address at "ciphertrust.com". Also according to WHOIS, "ciphertrust.com" has the same person as technical contact and if you check the website you find they are the vendors of "IronMail: The Secure Internet Email Gateway", an established if not well known product.

    In short, yes, it seem legit, and it probably took me less time to find that out than the time taken by the myriad people asking "is it legit" took to post the question. ;)

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  12. For profit? by alech · · Score: 2, Informative

    The domain is registered to Guru Rajan of ciphertrust.com. Funnily enough, Ciphertrust markets a product called IronMail that does (among other things) spam detection. So who says they are really putting the database out once they have it and not use it for their own good?

  13. Re:Maybe I'm being cynical.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    If it is just a ploy to get addresses, avoid the trap by using a DEA (disposable email address); emailias.com, sneakemail, spamex, etc.

  14. Re:A hotmail account is just as good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Actually, I have a hotmail account JUST FOR MESSENGER. I never give out this address. And yet, even with the spam filters turned on, it was almost always showing "1 new message". Finally I switched it to "allow only messages from people on this list", and with an empty allow-list, I haven't got any spam so far.

  15. There are already many spam archives by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 2, Informative
    You can find many of them listed from my spam archive :-)

    Rich.

    --
    libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
  16. Service is already available on the windows side by terradyn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ok... for the people that still use Outlook, this exact service is provided by a company called CloudMark. The address is Spamnet.com. I've been using it for some time and it seems pretty robust. A community basically earmarks spam messages and based on votes a piece of spam gets moved to a spam folder on retrieval. Nothing is ever deleted.

  17. news.admin.net-abuse.sightings already exists... by tskirvin · · Score: 2, Informative
    I've moderated a Usenet newsgroup that does this kind of stuff for the last six years now (since Nov 1996). (Yes, I know others have stated some of this stuff, but it's worth mentioning it again.)