Human-Powered Spam Filtering

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Posted by Hemos on Monday September 20, 2004 @03:04AM from the interesting-concept dept.

arturs writes "A company called eProvisia started an unusal business: they filter out spam not by using complicated algorithms, but human beings... It costs around $20/year - is the war against spam over?" It's an interesting idea - the privacy concerns are big of course, but how would this stack up to, say SpamAssassin or a suite like Barracuda's Spam firewall. We tested the Barracuda device - great integration of OSS software, with a nice interface. Update: 09/20 15:12 GMT by J : Corrected price of Spam Eradicator.

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Buzzword Bingo by Lord+Grey · 2004-09-20 03:05 · Score: 5, Funny

From the company's "About Our Company" page:
Privately funded in 1993, now with customers in 40 countries* and over $67 million** in cash reserves, the company experienced a phenomenal growth and continues to aggressively pursue new frontiers in order to meet or exceed the needs of most demanding customers by providing a scalable, seamless, comprehensive offering.
Leveraging our paradigm-shifting product line with state of the art technology developed by a dedicated team of professionals, we offer a significant competitive advantage on the diversified but fragmented market of best of breed anti-spam solutions.

These people score a 9.8 out of 10 in the Buzzword Bingo game. That second paragraph, in particular, would keep me as far away from them as possible.

--
// Beyond Here Lie Dragons
1. Re:Buzzword Bingo by AndroidCat · 2004-09-20 03:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Ah man, I just needed "synchronicity" or "win-win situation" to fill my card!
  
  --
  One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
2. Re:Buzzword Bingo by The-Bus · 2004-09-20 03:13 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Damn it, I almost had a double diagonal if they had said "enterprise" and "legacy" --- drat!.
  
  --
  Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
3. Re:Buzzword Bingo by Aliencow · 2004-09-20 03:16 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  . ** - Palmyra Atoll dollars.
4. Re:Buzzword Bingo by spellraiser · 2004-09-20 03:19 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I hereby propose a new mathematical function. It is called BSD (no relation to the OS), short for BullShit-Detector.
  The calculation of BSD is simple. Its domain is the set of all strings. The range is all real numbers from 0.0 - 1.0. To calculate BSD(s) for string s, simply take the length of s (call this l). Then, divide the number of of characters that contribute to the actual, non-bullshit content of the string by l. This is the value of BSD(s).
  To give a pertinent example, it is plainly apparent that BSD('Leveraging our paradigm-shifting product line with state of the art technology developed by a dedicated team of professionals, we offer a significant competitive advantage on the diversified but fragmented market of best of breed anti-spam solutions.') = 0.0.
  It is my hope that this will leverage the ever-expanding work of linguistics researchers around the world in utilizing paradigm-shifting methods for significantly empowering their abilities to detect bullshit.
  
  --
  I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
5. Re:Buzzword Bingo by Clay+Mitchell · 2004-09-20 03:33 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Well, if they are reading everybody's spam, they are going to be damn good at spitting out buzzwords.
6. Re:Buzzword Bingo by Aggrazel · 2004-09-20 03:35 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Worse than that, click on the signup:
  
  The minute your mail starts flowing, a dedicated team of over a hundred trained Screening and Preselection Specialists, working 24 hours a day**
  
  ** - Timezone differences may apply.
  ....
7. Re:Buzzword Bingo by myc_lykaon · 2004-09-20 03:46 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  It also sent the Wankometer bananas.
  See the result here
8. Re:Buzzword Bingo by maxwell+demon · 2004-09-20 04:43 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Well, if a state had the advancement of art as first goal in its constitution, it could rightfully considered a state of the art, couldn't it?
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
9. Re:Buzzword Bingo by drakaan · 2004-09-20 05:13 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  Somebody kill him. Kill him now.
  
  --
  "Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
With a personal touch by mod_critical · 2004-09-20 03:05 · Score: 5, Funny

I wonder if they ever verify their decisions with you:

Mark,
This is Eric, your spam d00d. You got a message about fisting, you into that? Let me know, thanks!
-- Eric
1. Re:With a personal touch by PhotoBoy · 2004-09-20 03:08 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Yeah I was thinking that, how well does this solution work for non-graduate drug addicts who have erectile disfunction problems and need a loan?
Now here's a job... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-20 03:05 · Score: 2, Funny

That I would not mind outsourcing to the indians and chinese!
It is by spam alone I set my mind in motion by Colonel+Cholling · 2004-09-20 03:17 · Score: 4, Funny

What the article doesn't mention is that this "human-powered spam filtering" consists of Mentats who have been specially trained to use the latest Bayesian filters, and who bear the Imperial conditioning against deleting important messages.

--

I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
synergy! by H8X55 · 2004-09-20 03:27 · Score: 4, Funny

synergy!

I was waiting for synergy to pop up there somewhere...

What's a mission statement, About Us page, or memo from management without synergy?!?
Palmyra Atoll dollars by Colonel+Cholling · 2004-09-20 03:29 · Score: 4, Funny

Even better the $67 million dollars in cash reserves are in Palmyra Atoll dollars; I wonder what the exchange rate is?

One Palmyra Atoll dollar = 17 pieces of mithril, or approximately twenty kilograms of fairy dust.

There's no such thing, people. This is a joke.

--

I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Hmmmm. by modifried · 2004-09-20 03:31 · Score: 2, Funny

"... working 24 hours a day**..."

"** - Timezone differences may apply."

Damn. I was all excited about the fact that they worked 24 hours a day, but I live on the west coast.
Re:hilarious by Colonel+Cholling · 2004-09-20 03:34 · Score: 5, Funny

Coincidentally, $67 million Palmyra Atoll dollars is the estimated value of that Free Dell Desktop PC that's just waiting for those who click on your .sig.

--

I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Re:Party like its... by secolactico · 2004-09-20 03:36 · Score: 4, Funny

[the address]...Palmyra Atoll (Uninhabited Sovereign Territory)

This is thge odd part. How can an uninhabited territory be sovereign. According to the CIA Factbook it is a National Wildlife Refuge managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Also, it says it has no economic activity. What the heck would back Palmyra Atoll's dollar?

--
No sig
Re:Having RTFA... by crowdozer · 2004-09-20 03:37 · Score: 2, Funny

Yah I bet a small nature reserve island in the middle of the Pacific has a sweet broadband connection and population to facilitate such a business. Perhaps they are training monkeys to sort your spam. That would explain the price.
Re:ideas? by HTH+NE1 · 2004-09-20 03:42 · Score: 2, Funny

I thought this up long ago when address munging was in its infancy on Usenet. I referred to it as hiring a secretary.

They'd better not be applying for a patent.

--
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Re:hilarious by Umbro2 · 2004-09-20 04:20 · Score: 2, Funny

With all your attention focused on annoying us with your free ads for a DellPC (who wants one?) or an IPod (who doesn't already have one?); you missed the best one:
These people are "working 24 hours a day (Timezone differences may apply)"
Re:Filtering using spelling checker... by Andrewkov · 2004-09-20 04:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Unfortunately that would block email from most of my friends...
Re:Filtering using spelling checker... by Tar-Palantir · 2004-09-20 04:49 · Score: 3, Funny

I take it you've never seen how my 12-year-old sister and her friends type.

OMG tht is sooo cool!!!1 rlly? no way!! ... you get the idea. It's enough to make a spell-checker turn in its dictionary.