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Trustic Anti-Spam Service To Close
An anonymous reader writes "I recently received an email from the anti-spam service Trustic saying: "We have decided to close the Trustic service. We have determined that the system as it currently is designed will not achieve the level of accuracy that we require, and an inaccurate system is worse than no system."" We covered Trustic's anti-spam service, which billed itself as "a community-based block list that prevents untrusted servers from sending spam", as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Say what you want about statistical anti-spam methods implemented server-side or locally, but they work. Either SpamAssassin or SpamPal do their job at above average level.
inaccurate system is worse than no system
I think any blocking is better than no blocking. The only 'bad' thing is false-positives. If you lower your blocking to prevernt false-positives, you still have a service that is desired even if you don't catch them all...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I recently received an email from Microsoft saying:
"We have decided to stop distributing Windows. We have determined that the system as it currently is designed will not achieve the level of reliability and security that we require, and an unreliable and insecure system is worse than a non-MS system like Linux or MacOSX."
Personally I think it would be wonderful if technology alone could create the silver bullet and kill this annoying problem dead. But sadly as quickly as filters evolve, spammers are constantly looking for ways around them. All too often they find ways.
Even Earthlink's vaunted SpamBlocker is not bullet proof, in spite of using it, I still get some spam that slips in through it.
This is one of the reasons why we need some decent laws on the books so we can either force spammers to cease or prosecute the bastards.
These folks had a dream. They tried to make it work. When it became apparent that their solution was not viable, they had the honor to admit to it.
The hope of finding a solution to spam is expressed in the final line of their current site welcome screen:
We remain confident that the problem of spam is a solvable problem. Thank you for your help with this great experiment.
God bless them for trying.
I have been using an outfit that supplies a whitelisting service (port995.com). The idea being that the first time anyone sends you an email, it gets put into a queue and they get a response asking them to reply. Once they reply they get put on the whitelist, the message goes through and all future messages pass through without further messing.
As only a teeny tiny percentage of spammers supply genuine return addressess or read the responses the upshot in my case seems to be "new spray on no more spam"..
Inevitably some people don't read the first response or cannot be bothered to respond, but I guess those folks didn't want to contact me that badly anyway, so I don't want to read their messages that badly.
Marcus
I've been doing some research about the accuracy of different spam-blocking solutions, and Trustic had a huge false-positive rate. It misidentified 8% of my personal non-spam mail as spam, including mail from my Mom (it blocked our local cable ISP completely), my aunt (it blocked some AOL MX's), my insurance company (who the hell knows why), security warnings from CERT, and the NANOG mailing list.
It did have a good blocking rate---65%---but using a combination of other RBLs (the most optimal I found was DSBL + SpamHaus + Blitzed) it's possible to block nearly 75% of spam with only a .02% false positive rate (a single mailing list correspondent with an Argentinian ISP that has open relays was blocked).
It really is probably best that they laid this project to rest.
My Web Page
If they had only had more customers, I'm sure they could have held on longer.
If only they had found a quick, easy, inexpensive way to solicit hundreds of thousands of new customers using the Internet they could have stayed alive!
Alas, it could not even filter out their own mass email...
Spammers flooded the system with valid adresses to ruin the system. There was no way to combat this problem.
While I did my part to contribute to the Trustic database, I wasn't real sure about their methods. I submitted spam messages as they requested, but I had to tell them which address to consider to be a spam gateway. The addresses above that are marked positive. I always picked the first address outside of rr.com, but for all I know the nearest Roadrunner smtp system is a spam forwarder and I should have flagged it as negative. Pooling lots of people's ignorance won't necessarily provide good information.
How about we set up a market for spammers, modeled after the Iowa Electronic Markets. Except instead of buying futures in political candidates, you buy futures in a spammer dying. If people stand to make millions from a certain spammer biting the dust then the market forces will apply themselves naturally.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
For small server operators, getting falsely listed in a central blacklist can be a long and painful process. Inheriting a 'bad' IP address (one that was previously used for spamming, and is now recycled to a new owner) or getting banned as part of a range for the datacenter hosting you essentially blocks you permanently. Few people running these are concerned about false-positives, as everyone that tries to get themselves unlisted /must/ be a spammer. Perhaps this isn't true of the majority, but I've had horrible experiences with at least a minority.
Mod me down if you must, but if there's going to be a central blacklist, there should be checks and balances to its system.
Over the past few months I have been through a lot fighting anti-spam ip lists, primarily relays.osirusoft.com and spews. For all those saying that false-positives are rare or not that much harm compared to the need to stop spam, I think if you were in my shoes, you would feel differently.
The whole thing started when a spammer signed up for service at the hosting company that I have been with for several years. I have a server there with many of my clients websites on it (I am a web designer). So, the spammer purchased service at the same host as me, and happened to fall within the same IP block as I did. He was soon discovered and shut down, but the damage had already been done... spews and relays.osirusoft.com both put the ENTIRE ip block in their system.
Think about it this way: what can the host really do? The spammers come in, pay the setup fees, get one good night of spamming in, and then move on.
It took me several days to track down why some of my emails were not going through and who I had to contact to get removed from these lists. relays.osirusoft.com had some tools that is supposed to re-check, but it did no good... as far as I know, the thing doesn't even work.
In reading through these two websites, the self-righteous bastards that put together these lists really don't take any responsibility for their actions. They are quick to add entire IP blocks and take weeks to remove them even after the host has contacted them to inform them that the spammer has been shut down. These anti-spam lists apply fault to the host or to the isp implementing the list, but never to themselves, while at the same time preacing the wonders of the services they provide. If they don't want to take responsibility, then they should print more warnings about the mass amounts of false-positives that actually happen.
In addition to the anti-spam lists, the isps really need stop relying on these lists as the first defense to stopping spam. I had a chance to talk to one of them that a client of mine was going through and they told me that there was no way they could add me as a trusted ip because the anti-spam list comes in front of the exceptions list as a first line of defense. Even after we finally got removed from the anti-spam lists, many ISPs did not update their copies of the lists for weeks afterwards, causing more blocked emails even after we were off the list.
So, after hours and hours of frustration, fielding support calls, yelling, long distance phone calls, writing emails, reading page after page of self-righteous dribble, and trying desparately to explain that I just happened to have an IP address that was a coupled dozen numbers off of that of a spammer, as far as I am concerned, the more anti-spam lists that die, the better the place the world will be.
I hate spam. I cuss every fifth time I have to delete one (making that about 20 or 30 nasty words a day)... but the people who have really cost me the most time, money, and headaches are the anti-spam lists. Good riddance.