The Next Step In Spam Filtering

simeonbeta2 writes "Paul Graham (of "A Plan for Spam" fame) has a couple of new articles up. The first one details the success of Bayesian spam filters despite various circumvention techniques by spammers. While the success of Bayesian spam filtering is encouraging, it certainly hasn't seemed to stem the flow of spam in the last year or so. His second article, however, suggests finally taking the anti-spam battle to the spammers! Paul proposes that spam filtering packages automatically spider links contained in probable spam. Not only will this increase the accuracy of filters (by running the retrieved content through the spam filter as well) but this would effectively be a massive distributed DOS attack on spammers. This isn't a new idea nor is it without its problems but I think it's definitely an idea whose time has come."

Comments

Could be evil.

[grub]

Imagine a Joe-Job where an EvilDoer wants to knock someone else offline and sends out bogus spam with the victim's website.. Think before you jump.

Stop wrecking the Internet.

[Sheetrock]

Spam alone chews up more than enough bandwidth.

Having every recipient spider the links in the spam they get will not only make spamming inefficient, but web browsing as well. Enough with anti-spam cures that are worse than the disease -- the last almost killed SomethingAwful, and this might knock off the rest of the websites.