FTC vs Spammers

binaryDigit writes "The San Jose Mercury News has an article on the FTC getting ready to take action on an (alleged) spammer. 'The Federal Trade Commission said today that after receiving about 46,000 complaints it had asked a federal judge to halt the operation.' Too bad it took 46000 complaints to prompt some action, but at least some action is being taken. The FTC will focus on the "deception" involved (innocent and misleading subject lines, bogus (but real) from/reply to addresses, etc)."

Comments

Obligatory Bayesian Filtering Plug

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

This is the obligatory SPAM thread plug for bayesian filtering.

If you're not already doing it, give it a go in one of its many forms.

I've been using POPFile for ages and it works a treat.

How did the complaints come in?

[Elvisisdead]

Possibly uce@ftc.gov? That's the address I've been sending them to.

Forward your spam to the FTC

[travdaddy]

A slashdot article FTC Encourages Consumers to Forward Them Spam was posted on September 7, 2002 stating that the FTC wanted people to forward them spam at uce@ftc.gov.

actual ftc site

[ih8apple]

Here's the actual FTC announcement...

Re:Spamassassin and recent false-negatives

[Mr Guy]

Bayesian WOULD help you.

The Bayes filter would decide that since it had a short subject line, it wasn't coming from someone you know (names on whitelist are always non-spam), and it contains IMG SRC but no other POSITIVE hits, it's would score VERY likely spam on a properly trained filter.

The only problem you may have is if your mother regularly sends you pictures of her dog with a subject line like Here.

HTML email by itself scores very high on probability for spam, because very few people besides spammers use it. Those people are generally vetted by their other content.