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Human-Powered Spam Filtering
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.
privacy concerns are big of course
I thoroughly enjoy wikpedia and I have always thought of new ways of using the wiki concept - here is one solution to spam without privacy concerns.
Your email interface would look at a list on the wiki page and filter out any known spam. One spam slips through and you can make a new entry at wik (like database or text page whatever). The entry could be the whole email or an algorithm but either way an algorithm would eventually be made based on a pattern to reduce the entry size (who knows the community is in control of it). Fixed the privacy concerns unless you did it to yourself.
The next great thing about the wiki is you could take that 20 bucks a month and make a donation to the wiki. Not only would you be helping thwart spam but also supporting a great dictionary, encyclopedia and all things great with the open concept.
The $20/month figure sounded a little high until I read that it is $19.95/year, not per month.
That being said, I don't know if I see the benefit of paying someone else to read my email. They even offer more expensive packages to have them categorize and summarize your mail for you, as well as discard non-spam mails that you don't want anyway. I suppose it could be useful for really busy executive types, but then can't they afford secretaries anyway?
Modded funny, but I agree 100%. Who writes these things ?? Do they start with a list of 20 words (Paradigm, leverage, diversify) and have their managers tell them those words MUST be included ?? Yeesh !
People stop trying to profit so much to help reduce or stop it...
I'm not sure who's worse anymore, the companies out there who sell services to 'help' you reduce/eliminate spam, or the spammers. (Maybe one in the same, in some instances)..
The only resolution I see to spam is good, solid legislation THAT IS ENFORCED. Country harbors spammers, cut them off from the US internet. Spammers AND the companies that hire them BOTH held equally liable. If it's a criminal act to spam, it's a criminal act to hire someone to spam.
People can write programs all day to try and stop spam, it won't matter. If someone can write a program to filter x out, someone else will find a way to get y through. It's an endless cycle.
Spam is like a virus in so many ways...
...that site *must* be a spoof. All the disclaimers and address in Palmyra Atoll is so dodgy.
Besides, I used to live out that way (Kiribati, in the early 1970s, then called the Gilbert Islands), and I don't recall hearing about these guys! Oh, wait, 1993...
Ydco co
yeah and would like a bunch of buzzword bozos to READ EVERY DAMN MAIL YOU GET??????????????????
personally i just think though that they use some filters to help..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
(3) Choice of Law and Jurisdiction. These Terms of Use will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Uninhabited Sovereign Territory of Palmyra Atoll, without giving effect to its conflict of laws and provisions of your actual state or country of residence. Any claims, legal proceedings, or litigations regarding eProvisia LCC and its affiliates, subsidiaries, and representatives, will be brought solely in and you consent to the jurisdiction of Palmyra Atoll courts.
So the first line on their front page reads:
"For the first time ever: 100% reliability in combating spam. Guaranteed."
But the first two bullet points of their TOS also read:
"You understand that there are no guarantees, either expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, confidentiality or availability of the service."
AND
"You agree to hold harmless and indemnify eProvisia LCC and its affiliates, subsidiaries, and representatives, from and against any legal claims, including liability for the company not adhering to the terms and conditions of this agreement. "
So they guarantee to stop 100% of spam...but if they don't, that's too bad as they never claimed to anyway and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
Some juicy info on the Palmyra Atoll:
"Palmyra Atoll Palmyra is an equatorial atoll, a circular string of 54 small, heavily vegetated islets formed by the growth of coral on the rim of an ancient submerged volcano. The Palmyra Atoll is a thousand miles south of Hawaii, an untold distance from civilization. Uninhabited by humans and wild to the core, it is the last intact marine wilderness in the U.S. tropics."
So they are claiming human spam filtering from a place which is uninhabited by humans. I guess it is true that if you have a million monkeys banging on the keyboard they could actually turn out a real product.
I was out with my girlfriend yesterday morning, we went to breakfast and left the restaurant. When we arrived back at her place, she noticed that I had a flier attached to my car window. Something I had never even noticed when driving. It was for some silly event that I can't remember but it made me start thinking. You know, this is just spam..and yet I'm not all that upset about it. In fact, you see spam everywhere in life, but people rarely get as upset or harbor such a strong emotional feeling toward it. For example:
Billboards - Spam. I didn't ask to see all that while driving
Homeless people begging for money - Spam. Like the Nigerian guys trying who promise you 1 gazillion dollars once you donate 5k
Fliers - Spam. (eventhough I'm always interested in what what is going on my city, but please don't put it on my car window without asking)
People who wear clothes that have the clothing logo in 20 inch font plastered on the chest - Spam. I'm not going to buy clothes just because they say Von Dutch so stop trying to get me to buy them
Cell phone company trademarked ring tones - Spam. It's like they're trying to get me to buy a nokia phone by playing it's themesong over and over.
Bumperstickers - Spam.
Racing Decals - Spam.
Racing Decals on Jackets - Spam.
Can you think of any more? Feel free to jump in
Sorry if this is off topic..I just wanted to share. Why? Because sharing is caring.
This is a great joke, and once more Slashdot's been had.
-Rabin
"24 hours a day" * 30 days/month = 720 hours
$20 per month / 720 hours = about 3 cents an hour.
No, because remember they have more than one customer, and it's not a ratio of one employee to one customer. One employee can probably service dozens and dozens of users, especially if you're prescreening email with SpamAssassin. When I start work in the morning, I can clear out the night's junk mail (after SpamAssassin's leftovers) in a matter of seconds.
I'd be more interesting in seeing the lag time between a mail going in, and it being "cleared" by their spam system.
What's your damage, Heather?
State of the art is a perfectly legitimate tool which is nonetheless nearly never used appropriately. People are always trying to claim that their tool that puts together a couple old concepts in a new way is state of the art. Unless you're doing something that's never been done before, that is nonetheless widely recognized as probably being the best way to do it (or will soon come to be recognized as such) you're not state of the anything.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I just wonder if Hemos knew that when he posted it...
We seem to get more and more articles where obviously the editor didn't review the article, or verify it even superficially. Not good for slashdot... So far the trolls have been content with posting comments. These might get modded up for a short-term rush, but they are getting easy to do and get modded-down eventually. Now they see that bigger things can be done: create a joke website, submit an article about it to /. and fool the editors into posting it. The ultimate troll, they will get hundreds of comments, and the article will most certainly stay and eventually make it into google's cache... A trophy to stay around forever...
/. editors, expect to get swamped with troll submissions. You weren't checking the relatively manageable article submissions before so you could pump out a new one every half hour, now you must thoroughly check the deluge of mostly trollish articles, or risk slashdot going the way of internet stocks.
Yes dear