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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.
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
That I would not mind outsourcing to the indians and chinese!
Four pages, home, the product, terms of service, and about the company. The only thing they are missing is bios of the 'management team'. Even better the $67 million dollars in cash reserves are in Palmyra Atoll dollars; I wonder what the exchange rate is?
Overall, it looks like someone stole a 'dot com' idea from 1999. Anyone have a little red Corvette?
I'll stick with Spamassassin, Thunderbird.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
1. The only way that they'll be able to do this at a good cost is to use some kind of third world labour with a first language that isn't english. 2. Given that my baysian spam solution seems to be better at sorting spam than me (I've accidently deleted items which were not spam before), then I'm not entirely sure that a stranger could do better. They offer a 100% guarantee. I doubt they'll be able to offer a 100% service.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sa-milt-quar
I'm working on mimicking the barracuda's functionality, and have the spam quarantine working.
I apologize that sourceforge is showing no releases, the files ARE in cvs, and are stable after much testing. I'll try to get in and do a release later today.
My hope is to build a full spam firewall suite that is easy to set up and still have much scalability and control.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
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?
MailWasher Pro from Firetrust has an option similar to that known as FirstAlert, you sign up for a year membership and use their app to submit spam type messages to them, later, a human verifies that the e-mail is indeed spam and adds it to their database. Once added, any MWP users using FirstAlert will hit the database, see that the message is there and act accordingly (often times deleting without even showing it to the user). It works... ok, about 30% of my spam is nuked this way, the built in Bayesian filtering catches another 40% or so, and the DNS blacklists catch most of the rest. Of the last two groups I verify manually, but have come to trust FirstAlert... it's just a shame it's not getting the high %'s it used to.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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
"24 hours a day" * 30 days/month = 720 hours
$20 per month / 720 hours = about 3 cents an hour.
Since they say they begin "manually reviewing, hand-picking and approving important correspondence", how does this work? To pay someone $6/hour, they'd need to be reviewing at least 200 mailboxes simultaneously. My confidence level of their accuracy under these circumstances would be considerably -lower- than a software solution.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Look at this about page.
Im going to include their footnotes on that pge in parentheses and bold.
Privately funded in 1993, now with customers in 40 countries(Not all currently recognized by UN) and over $67 million(Palmyra Atoll dollars) in cash reserves, the company experienced a phenomenal growth
if its setup properly and bayes is enabled. Since Aug. 1st i've recieved 1800 emails flagged as spam... A few false positives but I have my threshold set pretty low. About 140 emails have gotten through and soon i'll take that folder and process it. Before I started processing spam that wasn't caught by spamassassin about 4-5 were getting through a day.. Now its once every few days.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
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.
(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.
from my understanding, all gmail users that click the little "report spam" button are essentially helping build the database and increase the effectiveness of its filters... though I guess they must be careful because this could potentially generate a lot of false positives.
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
There can be a huge advantage of looking over data manually.
My job is focused around looking at data to find problems. Many companies by high cost and very fancy data verification tools, address cassing software etc... Then they run these things on automatic on all of there data. What happens is that there data slowly becomes unreliable over time because they are paying their data entry a pittiance or are simply outsourceing it to a foreign nation who has people who do not speak the language, as much as spell it.
So, having someone like me who can clean the data (even sensitive data) to quickly check for errors, find common errors, and write novel solutions for them is a pretty big business. I deal with crap sent from data entry day after day and turn it into data that can be used, and is highly accurate.
So, I can definately see someone using a human as an intermediary between spam.
I could see this working this way. If the email comes from someone "trusted" in the company, it gets passed along without a human filter. Any email addresses that are not trusted would come by a physical person.
This way, if "Bob, your investment advisor" emails you, then that data would be sent directly to the company without human interference.
but, if a mail comes to sales@mycompany.com, then you would have a person scan that e-mail and verify its spammyness. This way, any spam that would get through would have to be from someone trusted. If someone is trusted, then they are not likely to be spam.
It could be a very good system, but I doubt companies would want to allow email to be looked at this way. Consumer responce data, address data, etc.. I can see, but not really e-mails unless there was a pressing need to stop it.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Actually, LLC's are the smart way to do a partnership. In a partnership, all principles enjoy equal responsibility for mishaps. In LLC's, all principles enjoy shared responsibility.
I guess the best way to sum it up would be to quote my Business Legal Environment professor: "...and I hope that now you all have a clear understanding of partnerships. Now let me give you a word of advice, never form one."
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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.
And people were upset when it was 'discovered' that GMail was going to programatically 'read' your email to provide contextual advertising (and spam filtering) as an invasion of privacy? Here we will have actual _people_ reading your private correspondences. No thanks.
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.
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?!?
A piece of software that is filtering your spam is not being paid to do it. Yes it's creators were perhaps paid, but at least they are one step removed. A paid human-based service doing spam-filtering, however, would have a direct motive to want as much spam flying around as possible, so as to have as many potential customers as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if this company was created by and is being funded by the spammers themselves as just one more way to make money from spam! .
Jiggity
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.
"... 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.
Why can't we use spelling checkers to filter spam? It seems all the spam now uses mispelled words and numbers in words to trip other filtering methods. So measure percent words mispelled or with numbers in them and above a particular threshold consider it spam.
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.
The most dismaying is the number of suckers who'll fall in it.
Not only that, but the contract is "governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of Uninhabited Sovereign Territory of Palmyra Atoll, ..."
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?
Many popular anti-spam systems, e.g. those implemented by webmail services, are already indirectly human-powered. Users classify their own spam emails and the everyone benefits system-wide without privacy concerns.
I'd say the system works pretty well. My Yahoo account, which was unusable after being harvested from my Usenet postings, is usable again. I just checked, and I have 426 messages in my bulk (spam) folder and 9 in my inbox. Of the nine, half (ok, 4!) are auto-responses from mail daemons to messages I never sent, while the other half are spam that escaped the filters. Not bad at all for a few days' worth of mail.
I think a sensible business model is for the webmail services to leverage their huge, continually updated, spam database and license them to ISPs, who can then filter spam at the server level before users download anything. I think that's much more elegant than software+community based solutions implemented at the user level.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
This is a great joke, and once more Slashdot's been had.
-Rabin
at eprovisia.coredump.cx.
.cx domain.
This site is a joke, and no more represents an actual business than that other famous site with a
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
This company can't possibly be real.
Anybody read their terms of service? You understand that there are no guarantees, either expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy, confidentiality or availability of the service. eProvisia LCC may choose to share any information acquired in the course of providing its services with other entities, and may, at its sole discretion and based on this information, take whichever actions the company, its affiliates, subsidiaries, or representatives, consider to be appropriate. You henceforth void your reasonable expectation of privacy, and your constitutional rights to a fair and speedy trial.
And their contact information. Um, Palmyra Atoll is an uninhabited pile of sand in the Pacific Ocean. "Palmyra Atoll dollars?" BWAHAHAHA.
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. That line sounds like it was generated with the Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
Thanks for the laugh, Hemos. No, I'm laughing at you, not with you.
From the CIA World Factbook on Palmyra Atoll:
Translation of eProvisia's four-page web site : We're from the Government, and we're here to help you.
Although he called it the 'Bologna Detection Kit' and applied it to pseudo-science. It actually works quite well here on /.
I think Yahoo's spam filtering is also human powered. It seems to be contantly getting better. I signed up for webspace with them ($20 per month) and get a lot of POP3 2G email accounts; their spam filter gets most of the spam and then I mark spam that is remaining in the inbox. Lastly I check for false positives and occasionally download the highly spam free email messages once a month or so using POP3 (I usually just use the web front-end for daily email access).
As seen here the Palmyra Atoll is nothing more then an inhabited ring of island a thousand miles south of Hawaii. There is no population, no government, no money, and very likely no eProvisia. The site is a complete farce, and is probably run by spammers collecting email addresses and names.
This article is not a troll. This is a very cleverly written ad for Barracuda.
I immediately realised such a business would never thrive, because:
Yes, it's a hoax. Which could be immediately deduced from the fact that it is not viable business (especially with the price they quote).