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Analyzing AT&T's Anti-Anti-Spam Patent
An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor is reporting in his eJournal taken, in turn, from Gregory Aharonian: AT&T has apparently been awarded a patent for circumventing certain spam filters, thereby providing slimeball spammers with yet a bigger hammer!" The patent covers "A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.)", although it's unclear exactly what AT&T want it for.
Has it occured to anyone that by patenting an anti-anti-spam technique, AT&T can legally forbid spammers from using that technique?'
Yay AT&T. I applaud you.
Kevin Fox
...that they want to prevent any spammer from
using the same techniques by threatening to sue
them for patent infringement?
Now all I need is an anti-patent patent and we can end all the stupid patent nightmares once and for all!
My logical reasoning would be AT&T plans to use this for their own ISP service. Ergo they get to provide spam filtered for their paying customers, but any other ISP chooses to filter in a certain way...down comes the lawsuit. Atleast that's what I think...
A patent on bank robbery!
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
If you look back, at the time AT&T would have been filing the patent they were in the consumer ISP business.
Odds are it was filed as an offensive tool to use against spammers.
A patent such as this could be used as a hammer against spammers using filter evasion approaches. The value of that for an ISP of the size of AT&T far exceeds the cost of filing a patent.
(AT&T are pretty clueless on many levels, but this looks like it was a smart move. It'll be interestng to see what, if anything, they do with it.)
Everytime I make a new filter rule in outlook, am I violating their patent?
Now, instead of being well-nigh untouchable due to spam's precarious placement as little more than a highly undesireable activity, AT&T can go after spammers IN COURT on grounds of PATENT INFRINGEMENT.
And going to court over something like this takes megabucks. Especially against a company the size of AT&T. Even if the spammers somehow weasel out on technicalities (like they didn't actually infringe on the patent directly), they're still going to be out so much money that their great grandkids aren't even going to be able to go to any educational institution after public high school.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
AT&T has patented a way of circumventing anti-spam filters. It's the spammers who will be the ones violating this patent.
1) Patents are a way of restricting rights to certain ideas/methods/etc.
...
...
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2) AT&T can prevent anyone else from circumventing anti-spam filtering software with this patent
3) Ergo, AT&T are the good guys
wait a minute, I thought they were the bad guys
I'm confused now
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
In purely intellectual proporty terms, there is validity in patenting the idea that helped evade .. something .. something. The reason is that there are many applications that can be derived from this concept, and currently the one that is being used as "proof-of-concept" is as a spam-filter evader.
.... So, I think is is wise for them to have patented it.
....
In time, as new applications are developed, AT&T would have a better hold on the foundations of this new market
And after all, who knows when the levers of power grate into the next set of positions i know, i know and spamming becomes the business to be in, AT&T might even be able to make a mint in the spam-invader-evader business
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
They will be telling us who they are :) It will be nice to get some home addresses. No reason, why do you ask?
Hopefully in this day and age of corporations getting a lot of bad press for treating customers poorly, AT&T will decide NOT to be completely stupid.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
What I suspect that they will do is allow it for their Pink contract holders and go after anyone else.
Fight Spammers!
Sounds like a line from Get Smart...
"We don't shusshhh here!"
yes, you are.
db
Cig:
ôô
Can people stop telling us about how they can sue spammers. We got the message after the first post.
what ever happened to black listing of the IP addresses that the spamers use and dumping mail arriving from those ip's???
No matter what the subject or the message sent, everything from the particular IP is sent to file 13.
All though using the subject, the message, the sender, and their ip does help in the filtering, a few elements together or alone does make or break a systematic spam filtering system.....
just my $0.02 from the cheap seats....
Say, aren't spam filters supposed to protect my inbox? And doesn't the DMCA stop people from circumventing protection measures? Therefore, isn't awarding a patent for circumventing a protection measure completely out of whack? o_0;;
Couldn't you use the DMCA to stop circumvention of mail security software?
That's a question, not a statement.
The patent covers "A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.)", although it's unclear exactly what AT&T want it for
Spamming, maybe?
Maybe this isn't part of a master plan -- maybe it's more random.
I could see a guy inside of AT&T working on something, and having to justify his time to his bosses. The lawyers who filed the patent probably work directly for AT&T, and so they gave it to them, and asked if it could be patented. The patent lawyers filed it, because they're patent lawyers, and that's what they do.
I tend to assume that this situation would fit right into a dilbert storyline. I don't think it's part of a grand strategy.
I can't imagine that AT&T would sell spam technology, because it would be a public relations nightmare. And I can't imagine that they'd try to sue spammers for patent infringment, because that would be expensive, and they wouldn't get anything out of it.
Okay. I can work with that. Now I shall patent a method to circumvent systems that use visual inspections to detect and block illegal quantities of cocaine from entering national and/or state jurisdictions.
Forget trying to wrest money out of some crummy /spammers/.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
This looks like a patent for the sort of anti-anti-spam technique that only bugs ISP's, all the more evidence that AT&T is using it to give their IT end (and those of their "friends") another weapon to fight spammers. Individuals can't use this kind of screening, it only works on the mail server level and above. There are plenty of other techniques they use for confusing individuals; heck, considering the USPTO's ineptitude these days someone could probably patent "Method for disguising the commercial nature of e-mail by use of misleading subject lines". Or "Method for sending unsolicited commercial e-mail that does not include the word 'ADV:' in the subject line". Or just patent "Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail" and sue them all.
With the patent, AT&T can sue the makers of spamming software for patent infringement, unless SpamCo (or whatever company) makes sure that their mass e-mailer doesn't use any of AT&T's patented methods for avoiding filters. Of course, this will result in a crippled program: AntiSpamCo (or whatever company) knows exactly what SpamCo is not allowed to do, so their anti-spam filters will actually work.
So why is AT&T doing this? One, it could be good PR for them once AntiSpamCo et al. realize the implications. Two, (this is for all you conspiracy freaks out there) the government may have asked them do to it. Governmental agencies cannot hold patents. Only individuals and corporations hold patents.
I'm not trying to claim that AT&T is some benevolent corporation, though. It's entirely possible that, in addition to suing SpamCo, AT&T could also try to sue AntiSpamCo. They might not have as strong a case, but AntiSpamCo would still be using pieces of AT&T patent in their filtering software.
Despite that troublesome possibility, it'll be good to see SpamCo get what's coming to it. A lot (perhaps most) of SpamCos are rather or the sleazy, shoddy side; I'm sure there will be patent infringement. It will be interesting too see how soon and how vigorously AT&T will defend their patent in court.
I'm sure that what they want to do is license the technology to "legitimate" spammers, such as online retailers.
Can Slashdot patent anti-anti-anti-spam?
And recursively more anti- as well?
Patent the technology so you can sue the spammers when they use it.
Why couldn't RedHat do this?
How can this be applied to SCO's C&D letters?
Or is AT&T breeding its own sinister plan of mailbox domination?
Find out next, on the BOFH channel!
thats why i firewall spammers. Let the stupid fucks
try to dodge iptables.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I doubt that they're promoting anti-anti-spam, so much as abusing the patent system so that they can sue spammers that try to circumvent for patent infringement.
AT&T recently got in trouble for violating the no-call list, because they were telephone "spamming." Also, I've gotten more telemarketing calls from AT&T than any other company, despite the fact that I've asked to be removed from their lists many times. It seems to me that AT&T will use this to spam with e-mail now, since the telephone is no longer working. I don't imagine they'll be violating their ISP's regulations if they do start spamming, either.
2 wrongs never made a right
From the final paragraph, before the appendices:
Keeping information secret about methods that could let spammers avoid filters would not prevent someone else from discovering the same techniques, if they haven't already.
Having information publicly about how to circumvent a technology at worst will let these techniques be used slightly earlier than they would've otherwise.
At best, it allows some people to start thinking about how to make counter-counter-counter-filter detectors, or come up with some other strategy AND sue spamming software makers.
So you know what the "email channels" mentioned in the previous quote are, patent are the 2nd to last paragraph states:
(No, I'm not going to paste the whole thing in backwards.)Some mail providers allow you to have multiple aliases for one email address, and to remove any of them when you feel like it. The same (or at least a similar) idea as using an @hotmail or @yahoo account as your non-primary mail, but much simpler to manage your contacts with.
The patent has nothing to do with this method of spam avoidance, except to mention it as not being susceptable to the patented form of counter-filtering. Read the patent. Just thought I'd mention that in case someone didn't RTFA.
How will I achieve the longer, thicker penis that drive women wild while I'm talking on my newly range-enhanced cellphone to my stock broker that just found a great new company in Nigeria that is a sure bet?
I wonder if hackers are now able to patent stack-smashing code, too. Maybe they could sue viruses and bugs out of existence!
If you are too lazy to read the entire patent, and insist on only reading a small part, how about also reading what the claims section says instead of just the abstract?
Sometimes, you know, patents are allowed that don't actually have prior art, or at least aren't as obvious as the abstract makes them sound.
The actual patent is here, and if you push 'page down' once or twice you will see (assuming you can actually be bothered) what they are actually claiming.
Even if AT&T wanted to use this for good and somehow had a way of enforcing this against spammers, it won't stop any existing spam you are getting since either a) it does not infringe upon this patent or b) is an example of prior art that defeats this patent.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Since Slashdot is now anti-anti-spam-spamming me with all those anti-anti-spam stories (counting future dupes ;-). I'm seriously considering suing them for anti-anti-spam-spamming as soon as my anti-anti-spam-spamming patent is granted, or maybe I'll drink this Mountain Dew.
Since slashdotters seem to hate spam so much all reason gets abandoned when it's involved, I thought I'd point out why this is so awful. Basically, it's a math algorythm. Like Quick Sort. Now stop and think about what computing would be like if Quick Sort was patented. The same sytem that allows this to be patented would also allow Quick Sort to be. We're fortunate that most of the ground work for computing was layed before this mess started. Anyways, I just wanted to make the point that there's no such thing as a good software patent.
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What happends if SpamCo has prior art to the patent. Does that validate the use of their own patent? I imagine Spammers who first thought of the method didn't think of logging the method used. Unless they happend to mail themselves the source code since its government stamped and dated via snail mail :)
1980...
Remember being charged for an unlisted number?
1990...
AT&T sells us caller-id, and then sells caller-id avoidance devices to marketeers, then sells us next-gen caller id to thwart their devices...etc...etc.
AT&T has been playing the middle for years...I see no reason for them to stop now. Patents just mean more money, faster.
Actually, this whole thing is probably blown out of proportion. The patent summary looks a lot like a paper by Robert J. Hall. I expect that ATT has a policy of patenting everything any of their researchers works on, regardless of what it is. The paper itself is mainly mathematics with the spam theme thrown in to make it interesting.
If they cannot call you to get you to change your long distance service, maybe they are doing to "telemarket" to your inbox. The Federal 'Do Not Call List' is changing the way a lot of traditional telemarketers are doing their business. Since they are now being fined for calling you, they need another way to invade your life and bombard you with offers. Having a technology that can circumvent spam blocking would be a step up on the competition.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If you read the patent, you'll see it has nothing to do with "random letters or dictionary words" to break hashing detectors.
Yes it does. Note that while they describe many ways to alter a message, the specific method used is not central to their claim, which is merely that m different versions are created somehow, that recipients are assigned to sublists in which the same ISP does not appear twice, and each sublist gets a different version. While it doesn't mention them specifically, any technique using n random letters in a message will infringe, since it effectively divides all users into m=26^n sublists and sends the same message to all users in a sublist. Use of enough random characters effectively generates such a large m that each recipient lands in their own sublist. Therefore there is no need to "determine if the selected address is substantially similar to an address on the selected sublist" since there are no addresses already in the sublist. Nobody gets the same message, so you don't need to worry about two copies of one version going to users at the same ISP. It is algorithmically equivalent to what they're claiming.
The patent goes on to describe many ways that a message might be altered, like reordering paragraphs, etc. In general many of the techniques they describe are subtle and do not allow as many permutations as you can get from a bunch of random characters, and so they stipulate (as a part of the claim) that care must to be taken that no sublist contains two "similar" email addresses. Meaning, don't send two copies of the same version to two recipients at the same ISP, who will notice the identical message hash. Duh. Any spammer could figure that out for himself. And like I said, if you use a large enough m this part of the patent is irrelevant since you don't need to worry about this problem. All the messages are unique.
If you are too lazy to read the entire patent, and insist on only reading a small part, how about also reading what the claims section says instead of just the abstract?
Yeah, what in the claims section do you think I missed?
Sometimes, you know, patents are allowed that don't actually have prior art, or at least aren't as obvious as the abstract makes them sound.
While true, that's irrelevant in this case because this is an obvious patent with plenty of prior art.
Sue the pants off spam software makers and spammers. hehehe. Not like I'd actualy have the resources to find 'em, of course.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Those numbers are very wrong. Spammers count returns in sales per MILLION emails, because the rate is so low. It's profitable because they send huge quantities of spam, so even a very low sale rate is quite profitable.
On the other hand real email marketing (done by a well known legitimate business, targetted to specific peoples who agreed to receive it) can get much better results.
Unfortunately, that would be the same as patenting anti-spam. You see, with quick change of variables:
spam' = anti-anti-spam (this is trivially true).
so patenting anti-anti-anti-spam is the same as patenting anti-spam', which is...
aw, forget it.
I hope that you noticed that I said 'If you are too lazy..." not "You are too lazy...". There is, in my mind at least, a large difference between adding "random letters or dictionary words" to break hashes, and using semantically similar but syntactally different paragraphs.
It appears that you think differently.
It is relatively easy to make filters that will ignore 'non-words', which make the random character method less effective, and the method of adding random words to messages would likely detract from the convincingness/power of a message being sent.
The trick of using html comments to hide these hash-busting words/characters is also easy enough to detect.
It would be more complicated to work out that a properly formed, completely valid looking message, with no strange words and no strange comments at all was spam. Having recognizable 'hash busting' sequences would tend to be recognizable, whereas this method would tend not to be.
Just because 'any spammer could figure that out for himself' doesn't mean they have.
Based on the contents of my inbox it seems that none of the spammers about have realized that. Most messages I get arrive in pairs.
Could you show me some of the obvious prior art with respect to this?
I don't mean the 'hash-busting' part, I mean the combination of any one of the claims in the patent?
I'm not meaning to say that you are lying, but do seem to be using the 'Everybody knows it is true' proof.
If it was 'obvious' it would seem that the duplicate filtering method of spam detection wouldn't work even now, woudln't it?
I may be wrong, but if I am, I would like evidence.
it means that AT&T wants to get a pitchfork or two up their keesters.
MoFoQ starts handing out pitchforks.
having actually just read the patent it would appear to be useless as it describes a means of avoiding a rather poor spam detection mechanism which I've never actually seen deployed.
Modern spam detection which uses statistical methods applied to the spam content would be unaffected by the techniques described in the patent.
Up until now, all anti spam tech was aimed at the individual spammer, but this can be aimed at the much smaller pool of people who write the tools to spam. This could cripple spamers.
Plato seems wrong to me today
GNP Not Patent. There ya' go.
All I ask is that all your ideas get prefixed with GNP because GNP plays a bigger part of your idea than what you thought up.
Frodo, I would use this power from a desire to do good, but through me.. it would wield a power too great to imagine!
Thank you, thank you:)
the obvious way to use this is for AT&T to actually develop software for it..then put it up for sale at $1 billion a license or something, then let the spammers try and get out of being sued into oblivion if they breach the patent ;o)
We still pay for unlisted numbers here in Australia...
By patenting this "technology", they are showing the weaknesses of current spam filters. Maybe that's what they intended all along... And now that i think about it, wouldn't this come under the heading of a software patent? I mean, its not code, but its an algorithm, right?
Learn about Photography Basics.
"AT&T can go after spammers IN COURT on grounds of PATENT INFRINGEMENT."
Oh absolutely, because spammers are so easy to track down, the threat of a lawsuit must keep them up at night.
Kee-ryest. You must ride the short bus.
As mentioned in a few other posts, this could mean AT&T can go after spammers for patent infringment. Now this seems unlikely, but if I got only one spam a day and it was from AT&T and I knew that they had hordes of lawyers tracking down "infringers" I would not only switch to AT&T, I would print out the daily message and admire it during the time I've previously allotted to hitting "D" a few hundred times...
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
What about sending a physical junk mail in an envelope designed to look like you've won money? That's arguably circumvention.
What about that? I believe it borders on fraud.
BTW, mail fraud is a serious federal offense. If only fraud via email were prosecuted as aggressively.
BTW, mail fraud is a serious federal offense. If only fraud via email were prosecuted as aggressively.
The U.S. government can pursue mail fraud because it has explicit authority (that is, authority not implied by stretching the commerce clause) over "post offices and post roads." It can afford to pursue mail fraud using the rents from its monopoly on first-class mail.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Also, I've gotten more telemarketing calls from AT&T than any other company, despite the fact that I've asked to be removed from their lists many times.
A company that telemarkets doesn't have to remove or respect the No-Call List with respect to customers with which it has an existing business relationship.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This part of the patent is the key:
Summarizing, in FDD, the idea is to maintain and publicly distribute two (or more) email addresses, both forwarding to the same mailbox. An email software agent then automatically deletes any messages that are received more than once.
This anti-anti-spam technique is to sneak past *honeypot* accounts, that automatically detect and delete for your legitimage account email that is received in your honeypot account.
Adding hashes and randomly generated irrelevant HTML will in fact achieve the same effect, and has been in use for years, and fairly clearly represents prior art. This patent should clearly not have been granted.
RTFB(lurb)
"AT&T has apparently been awarded a patent for circumventing certain spam filters, thereby providing slimeball spammers with yet a bigger hammer!"
Now stop and think about what computing would be like if Quick Sort was patented.
Easy. C's qsort() would heapsort instead, as it in fact does on some C library implementations such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior's. If heapsort were patented as well, qsort() would merge-sort on large-memory machines and Shell sort on small-memory machines. If more of the efficient sort algorithms were patented, programs would be designed to manipulate data in search trees instead of arrays. There exist several sorting algorithms; unlike patented file formats such as GIF and MP3, these have minimal to no interoperability disadvantages. You're going to need a broader example than that.
Will I retire or break 10K?
1) Slashdot links to article
2) Article links to Slashdot discussion
3) Slashdot links back to article
4) Article links back to Slashdot discussion
repeat...
The only people they could go after are the purveyors of the mailbombing software that utilitzes this technique. Just using the software does not make you a patent infringer.
And how will that stop spam? It's not exactly rocket science. Anyone could right that software if paid enough quietly.
No, AT&T is probably looking to sell "accurate and direct e-marketing solutions" with it's residential internet customer lists, with a guarantee the simpler classifier-based spam filters won't nullify them.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The part that seems to be unique is the checking that you are not sending the same message to an email adress that is substantially the same, from what I see.
If you could show some actual prior art, showing how it matches point for point with one of their claims, then maybe you might be on to something.
I'm not ruling out the possiblity of it, but you haven't justified what you claim is prior art actually being related to the patent.
I signed up for AT&T's worldnet service many years ago over the phone with my credit card.
Within 30 minutes I was online (was running Linux, so did everything by hand).
Within that time period, my BRAND NEW account/email address had recieved SIX SPAM MESSAGES!
Since that time, they added a 2nd way to reach that account (1st was username@worldnet.att.net, 2nd is username@att.net), which IMMEDIATELY started recieving many dozens of SPAM per day.
This is an UNUSED address that I've NEVER given out to ANYONE!
The only good thing about the way they did that is I dump every single email that goes to the 2nd address straight to a "spam" folder. I still get tons on the 1st account, but no-where near as many (only about 30-50/day).
AT&T IS SCUM, there's NO WAY they're using this patent AGAINST the SPAMmers!
BellSouth is just as bad too. I used to have them, but dumped 'em years ago after they went (further) down the toilet.
A friend uses them now... forced to by our current "administration" (scumbags in office) and their new law that kicked DirecTVDSL out of operation.
He and his wife now get TONS of incredibly explicit, pornographic (and other sexual) SPAM at an unbelievable rate.
THEY HAVE SMALL CHILDREN! (that don't need to increase their ejaculation by 600%, increase their penis-size (puberty will do that, in several years), etc.)
Luckily, he's a geek like me and set up a SPAM filter at home on one of his Linux servers.
I can't believe how scummy companies get when they have enough money to buy our congresscritters!
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
can i get a patent that inherently violates the DMCA as well? i mean, nothing so complex as circumventing something that circumvents a spam circumvention process, but... maybe something to prevent the RIAA from preventing whatever prevention methods that gnutella provides to prevent unauthorized access to protected files?
"Those numbers are very wrong. Spammers count returns in sales per MILLION emails"
I rather think whoever the original poster was paraphrasing meant that 15% of people click on at least ONE spam in their lifetime and 7% bought from at least ONE spam. That sounds pretty high but certainly not hundreds or thousands of times too high.
personal anecdote: I've never seen a spam with lots of misspellings and garbage in it get past bogofilter.
Just checked my email...
+ 59 Nov 16 Vanessa (1592) Unreal Penetrat1ons
+ 60 Nov 16 Vanessa (1558) Unreal Penetrat1ons
+ 61 Nov 16 Vanessa (1575) Unreal Penetrat1ons
And only differences are the "hash busting" parts.
No effort at all to make the message _substantially_ different at all.
Oh ja, and the badly spoofed Z-Mailer: part.
Strange though that they don't do the 'obvious' duplicate filtering...
How about:-
Instead of deleating only, forward ALL your spam to your 2 senators and your representatve, then deleate. If everyone did it you can be sure a solution would be forthcoming fairly quickly.
AT&T can prevent anyone else from circumventing anti-spam filtering software with this patent.
That is not what a patent does. A patent prevents you from using the techniques described in the patent for the purpose described in the patent. It does not prevent you using different techniques to do the same thing, nor from using the same techniques to do completely different things.
Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin. Nobody else could copy it to process cotton, but they could invent new ways to process cotton, and they could copy it to fabricate surfboards if they could figure out how.
Also note the date of the application: December 16, 1999. I don't think spammers were using such techniques back then.
Dave
"As far as I'm concerned, computer owners are entirely responsible for what their computers do, and if they allow (yes, ALLOW - if you get infested by a winvirus, or run an open relay, YOU are responsible for that happening and YOU are responsible for what the virus or relay does) their machines to be hijacked by spammers, they are as guilty as the spammer is, and should be made Bubba's Prison Fucktoy."
OK, Mr. Perfect Boy, maybe nothing statistically unlucky ever happens to you, but for the rest of use, even with due diligence, occasionally Bad Things happen to us. Sheeeesh. May you eat bad meat and get very sick for a week, then recover and develop an ounce of feeling.
For years, AT&T has been selling services that are supposed to cut back on telemarketers soliciting consumers. Case in point, they offer caller ID.
Except here's the deal. Ever notice that telemarketers consistently slip under the radar when it comes to caller ID with the infamous "Unavailable" tag? I would believe that in exchange for the caller ID, AT&T would likewise sell telemarketers a tool to circumvent it.
My suspicion was raised when, prior to the no call act, I had received many telemarketer calls. Ironically, these were not identified on the caller ID system, but were calls from the telephone company itself, promoting their new services. The telephone company (U.S. West) circumvented their own technology.
To me, it's a sinister cycle. Telephone company sells consumers technology to dodge telemarketers, company sells telemarketers a way to circumvent said technology. Who profits? The phone company, of course. And so long as the system "sort of" works - that is, as long as not all telemarketers can circumvent the system - no one would be the wiser, right?
Now, you might argue that spam is different from telemarketing and you would be right. After all, spam can be blindly sent anywhere and you don't need an army of people to wreck havoc. Still, I would be suspicious of the phone company having such a patent. There are many other ways they could punish spammers if need be - why patent a circumvention technology? Unless they intend to turn around and... yeah, you know the rest.
Course, I might just be cynical about telecommunication companies. And I might just be overreacting to something very common. But in this day and age I don't think such suspicion is unjustified.
I'd like to take this oportunity to nominate AT&T...
Different protocol, different ports... Have the first server from the user append a count of how many emails this user has sent this hour.
On the mail client side if the "hourly volume count" of the sender is too high, flush! Out it goes.
Yeah, AOL etc won't switch... but I could check the "old mail system" once a week without a problem. But mail from the geekier friends would be quick, clean and spam-free.
--Rob
then they'd just move the software to the underground (opps, it's already underground?), or maybe open-source it within the spamming community. If the MPAA can't stamp out DECSS, do you really think the government or ATT could eliminate every instance of spam software source code on the Internet?
...when I read it in the article. Try R'ing TFA instead of going for FP next time.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Well I've got anti-anti-anti-spam software. I know all about you. You can't hide from me.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Several people here have already mentioned that the demographics involved -- stupid spammers, stupid customers, and the millions of e-mails it takes to get a reasonable response rate -- are what keeps spam moving. To that end, I wonder why we haven't seen a lot more study of those demographics? I mean, I know many such studies have been done, but they seem to pale in comparison to the number of studies of technical ways to defeat spam.
Since I think more such studies would be a good idea, I've just opened up all of my spam to anyone who wants to analyze it. With 17,169 pieces so far and many more to come, I figure it's statistically significant. I'll be doing statistics of my own soon.
How To Get Humans To Mars
That AT&T came out and did this, frankly, rocks. Good show, guys.
The only concern I have is that there is prior art, which will come up as a double-edge sword again. Prior art will protect the good guys from frivolous patent filings (Amazon, anybody?), but as such I'm concerned that the spammers will pull the prior art card against AT&T. On the other hand, AT&T's interest - protecting their network - and the fact that they probably have infinitely larger amounts of money than your spammers just might put an end to them for now.
This sig no verb.
AT&T, as a service provide has a good excuse for wanting to get past poorly configured spam filters. While they might be pimping long distance service with it, they might also be delivering notifications of service changes, or freebies for their customers, what have you. If someone goes out and grabs some random spam filter, and sets it to "strongest/er" out of frustration they might other wise block emails they not only want but need.
Isn't this a DMCA violation... They circumnavigated (read "hacked" by any cooperation) the Spam filter. If they can get away with it, will I be able to as well?
They go on to say they want to patent it "...to ensure the information remains public and is not hoarded by someone seeking to profit from it."
Full story here:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNew s/1052224263146_7?s_name=
So.. AT&T's possible motive is to prevent a spammer from patenting this technology... and then NOT use it.... or, conversely, sell it for ransom.
Holding such a patent would certainly be a marketable selling point for AT&T's ISP/email services, no?
~m
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
Wonder if Overture needs the cookie for this to actually have effect. I don't wanna risk it.
This (brief) code is hereby released, without copyright, under the GNU General Public License version 2.
nt
The initial versions of this were things like putting "Dear Bob" in mail to "bob%s@%s.com", etc., and building remove-me addresses customized for the recipient, and over the years duplicate detection algorithms have gotten better and so have spammer's workarounds. I'm not sure how deep into the arms race that process was in 1999, when the patent was filed, but the basic approach was still obvious.
Now, if AT&T wanted to sue some spamware vendor for violating the patent, the defendants have to come up with lots of lawyers, guns, and money to fight the patent, but they're more likely to just skip town, especially if they were selling the spamware from some disposable corporation that can go bankrupt.
The reason for the concept of "prior use" is to keep people from patenting ideas they didn't actually come up with first because they're so ridiculuously obvious. But spammers work so hard covering their tracks, are they going to have a hard time proving prior art if they get sued for patent infringement? It would an amusing irony if this wasn't such a blatent example of a patent that should get rejected on grounds of "duh!". I don't care if ATT's motives are purely altruistic. This is a BAD precedent for all the same reasons as the Patriot Act and the DMCA.
This was my immediate reaction... if the patent holds, then most spammers are violating it pretty much automatically. If it's successfully challenged, it's that much more ammunition for the patent-abuse battle.
I said "statutory damages." Actual damages apply even if the copyright owner waits until the day before filing suit to register the copyright, but according to 17 USC 412, statutory damages (the commonly quoted $150,000 figure) apply only if the copyright was registered early.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wouldn't circumventing spam protection for "use of a private network" (delivering email) be a DMCA violation?
Looks like a chance for the DMCA to actually do some good for a change, I mean it says right in the patent that it's a circumvention device! :-)
This patent:
USPTO 6,631,400 is even more interesting. If you look at it, it's basically a patent on spamming.
The problem is though that you would only need to use a technique where you got no feedback on how many got the spam (such as spam's without hidden 1px images) and the patent wouldn't apply...
... and forget "FOR" or "AGAINST".
AT&T developed something. That cost them money. It cost them very little more to patent it. Patented, it's protected: if anyone uses it for anything, no matter who or what, AT&T stands to make money and recover development costs.
That's all just a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious. Why must everyone assume more? I can't see AT&T doing it for any other reason than for its own sake. I doubt the decision to file a patent had anything to do with the content. I doubt they care what it can be used for, other than generating income.
I'd like to be wrong. But then I'd also like to propose a new oxymoron: "altruistic corporation".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It doesn't really matter. Content-filtering based spam controls will never, ever be effective, because as soon as someone figures out a way to circumvent the spam filter, the spam filters get updated. It's a never-ending cycle, and AT&T can create all the goofball patents they want. Relay blacklisting is still the most effective method of controlling spam. The more blacklisting that occurs, the more spammers are forced to congregate in smaller areas of the net and be more ethical in their practices.
Now we have a legitimate reason to sue them into oblivion.
*If* it's AT&T's idea to sue spammers who use the idea, it's good. The more spammers get sued the better...
--v
There IS some hope that AT&T's patent can be used against spammers. After all, who else needs to defeat spam filtering, and why should AT&T license this technology when they can pillage and plunder anyone they catch using it. I suspect that spam is costing AT&T more than anything they could get through licensing this patent.
To those who think spammers will flout any law, I offer this interesing story: I used to get lots and lots of e-mail about "Herbal Viagra", and other "Viagra-like" products. So did one of my colleagues, who got really annoyed when the spam surpassed his ability to ignore it. It just so happens that this guy works for Pfizer (the manufacturer of Viagra). He started forwarding the "Herbal Viagra" spam to the Pfizer legal department, along with his analysis of who the real senders were. There is still plenty of spam, and much of it is for Viagra (real or generic), but you won't find Viagra used as the name of anything that is not Pfizer's Sildenafil Citrate (aka Viagra). If there was a TV show "America's Dumbest Trademark Infringers", I guess these Herbal Viagra clowns would be starring in episode #1.
The idea that AT&T might patent anti-anti-spam technology in order to sue spammers is not far from how the notorious gangster Al Capone was finally jailed: despite gigantic illegal smuggling operations and various murder charges, they eventually got him for tax evasion.
Another reason AT&T might be interested in researching this kind of stuff: if you find a sure way to break a given anti-spam technology, then it sets up a perfect test for any other future anti-spam technology. In other words, it becomes the litmus test of future anti-spam tech from AT&T. "Does it pass this?"
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