SpamArchive.org Launched

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."

Comments

What about NANAS?

[tsvk]

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?

Re:Hard to get worked up about that

[arvindn]

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.

NANAS Google Archive

[Ricardo Dias Marques]

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

spamarchive.com

[philj]

I've owned spamarchive.com for ages.

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

Whois..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Spam archive and stats

[minesweeper]

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.

Not intended purpose

[0x0d0a]

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.

Re:So...

[Arker]

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.

Are they legit?

[Zocalo]

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. ;)