Slashdot Mirror
Risks of Partisan Spam Filtering?
Mike1024 asks: "Pete Klammer reported in RISKS 23.95 about spam filtering software filtering political e-mails - including Postini blocking certain anti-Schwarzenegger URLs and Comcast blocking e-mails mentioning afterdowningstreet.org. This could be caused by malicious action, misreporting of spam, 'joe jobs', or actual spamming. With many people using their ISP's default settings, and manual spam filtering being impractical for many users, what can be done to avoid giving ISPs and anti-spam companies extensive, fully automated censorship abilities?"
That would seem to me to be the #1 cause of political spam being filtered. #2 would be the outlandish use of HTML when a text message would do just as well. If they stopped just those two behaviors, most of the spam filters would let the messages through just fine.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
What with the modding down of any conservative opinion and what not.
This is Slashdot, bastion of left-wing long-haired dirty hippy Socialists. What do you expect?
Does political mail look like spam? Oh God, yes. Again, no surprise that a Bayesian style filter might get confused.
Should we chuck automated email filtering? This problem has always existed. Important messages have a small chance of being miscategorized. If that's not acceptable to you, don't use those filters, or switch to an email provider that doesn't filter your mail that way.
"Partisan" spam filtering is a farce. What the hell could the ISP possibly gain by surpressing political viewpoints? It's a software fuckup.
...that folks were clamoring for ISPs to do MORE to prevent spam. Now they're doing more, and we're wondering if it's too much and they should do less. decicive bunch, aren't we?
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
ISPs shouldn't block anything at all except by protocol/standard - for example dropping mail not properly sent when using SPF or similar. But blocking based on content, etc. is not proper.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
All your (snail) mail gets delivered to me. I will read it, and throw away anything that looks like junk, and then send the good stuff on to you. I won't tell you what I've thrown away, or what criteria I use.
You wouldn't sign up for that, would you? So why do people put up with third-party spam filters that do the same thing? I know that spam is a big problem, but everyone ought to take control over their own communications. It's one thing for me to decide to throw some email away unread; it's quite a different thing to give someone else that power over me.
Spam filtering is by its very nature censorship. You're agreeing to have your incoming email censored so you don't have to deal with spam. If you don't like the terms of that, well, it's up to you. Set up your own mail server and customize the spam settings how you see fit. Or even find a decent host with SpamAssassin and tweak that to your liking. Or just find an ISP/mail host with no spam filtering, and handle it on your client with Bayesian training.
Of a guy who gave up isp's all together. And it's practical for your email. Buy a domain for about $15/yr and find hosting anywhere from $1-$10 per month. This gives you no filtering, and so then you can go and download and/or write your own spam filter.
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
With many people using their ISP's default settings, and manual spam filtering being impractical for many users, what can be done to avoid giving ISPs and anti-spam companies extensive, fully automated censorship abilities?"
Well, there you go.
They shouldn't use the default settings.
The Masses are getting what they want. The least amount of spam possible.
If some people are really interested in their email then they would be well advised to spend a few minutes looking at the filtering options.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
what can be done to avoid giving ISPs and anti-spam companies extensive, fully automated censorship abilities?
Making them openly disclose exactly what spam filtering policies they use.
After all, if people have no idea about what they're not getting, they won't even know.
For example, I lost out on a wonderful opportunity to help out a government official in Nigeria that my friends are pursuing right now.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is where I believe capitalism can be used to pursuade the company to make wise choices.
This can be accomplished now with blogs and easily searchable news.
Just put spam filtering in the hands of a large, trusted organization with experience in secure systems such as Diebold.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Starting by running some decent lists. These folks run some amazingly slipshod lists, usually unconfirmed optin, and sometimes outright buying addresses. What do they expect? They're spamming!
But they figure that since they're not commercial, that they have a cause and a message, that they don't really have to pay attention to running a clean list, and anyone who blocks them must be a political censor.
I'm a left liberal, but I find myself blocking the DNC more often than the RNC, simply because the former has less stringent mail practices.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Unsolicited e-mail from someone not on my address book has a huge likelihood of being spam.
The fact that a bulk-mailing to a bunch of people happened to be political in nature doesn't change the fact that those messages smell shockingly like spam.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Come on, anytime you hire someone else to handle your responsibilities, they are going to screw up sometimes.
/.?
You could hire someone to point out all of the interesting TV shows for you. They will miss some good ones and they will give you some that are boring.
You could hire someone to push the FF button on the remote to skip the commercials on the DVR. Will they skip over the 1 in 100 that is actually advertising something interesting? Yes.
People do hire others to teach their kids and listen to the noise about schools today!
Why do complaints about crappy SPAM filters make it onto
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
The spam system I use is the challenge/response type. You get told you can ask for access to my mailbox and I can decide to allow it.
As for other automated systems like Postini, which we use at work it all comes down to the content. A lot of time configuration errors will creep in as well like the time all mail a guy named Dick H... was being deleted without notice! You can guess why.
PostIni has actually blocked some political mail to me and I can give you a few hints.
Certain political emails contain verbage that gets labeled as porn or hate speech. That second category is so broad and abused that companies will throw about anything that might hint of insensitivity under it just to keep themseleves safe.
The second category they got caught by? Money. There is a $$$ category that attempts to weed out money requests and the like.
Do I care one way or another? No, I particulary did not like how the government excluded the rules of spam from acting on elected officials and I really couldn't care less about any unsolicited spam from either aisle.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I seem to recall reading stories that most cyber-nanny type products block access to liberal sites like NOW and PETA and bloack access to democratic candidates, but never block traffic to sites like the NRA...
h tml
Can't find an original story right now, but http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/46/urban_work.
#1. The sending address is on a blacklist because that address sent a message to a spam trap.
#2. The sending address is on a blacklist because people received the email and submitted it as spam.
#3. If #1 or #2 apply, web links inside the message can be classified as "spammy" content. This includes links to graphics, articles, and so forth.
#4. See #3, but key words can be classified as "spammy" content. The easy way around this is to use the "this is not spam" function that should be available to you.
So, the "problem" can be broken down as: The sender is an idiot for sending the crap to people who don't want to receive it.
If you're worried that you're missing emails of any sort (politics is a red herring as far as I'm concerned), go with an email provider that tags messages instead of deleting them. This is a simple configuration in SpamAssassin, and any competent mailhost will set it up on a user-configurable basis. I'm not saying that ISPs will be so kind as to offer this option, but if you can afford it, you've probably already got your own domain at a webhost somewhere.
The webhosting company I use for my personal stuff does this (not going to mention names, because I don't want this to sound like a plug). I can set up unlimited POPs and forwarders, and adjust the SpamAssassin settings on each one; not only the scoring gestalts, but also whether messages that are considered spam get deleted, or simply have a [SPAM] tag added in the subject line.
I opt for the tagging. This means that I get all of the email, but with a single filter rule on my mail client (i.e. matching "[SPAM]" in the subject header), I can sort all the questionable stuff to a "Junk" folder and go through it later.
If your ISP drops or deletes spam mail, set your mail up elsewhere, or bitch heavily to your ISP requesting that your spam be tagged instead of nuked. I hate spam as much as the next guy, but there's no reason that any ISP should be risking false positives and having their customers lose legit email.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
It could be worse, you could be using some sort of e-mail provider, whether ISP based or web based, which automatically deletes certain e-mail before it even reaches your inbox. It doesn't matter what your junk mail settings are. *cough* Hotmail *cough*
Now if I can just convince the USPS to filter out the ads that clog my mail box.
Mostly it looks like an issue of enforcing and/or clarifying United States Code, Title 47, Chapter 5, Subchapter II, Part I, Sec. 227:
That stopped the junk fax problem which some here may be old enough to recall. Spam costs. It costs schools, it costs businesses and it costs individuals. Sure electrons are 'cheaper' than fax paper, but time costs and weeding spam or messages lost due to false positives cost lots of time, especially the latter.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
what can be done to avoid giving ISPs and anti-spam companies extensive, fully automated censorship abilities?
Well.. I would have to say one of the services TFA complains about is actually an example of an acceptable way for an ISP to have balance. Postini does not 'delete' any spam, it only quarantines it. And not only that, but when you release a quarantined message, it asks if you wish to make the sender 'approved'. Not only that, but it correctly handles mailings lists because it will use the 'To:' address, rather than the from address to stop filtering approved messages when appropriate. In fact, you can put any approved addresses into Postini in advance of it ever seeing email from those addresses.
Standard disclaimer: I do not work for, or have any financial relationship with Postini.
But, I did work for an ISP and was part of the decision making process when we decided to use Postini as a solution to the complaints we had from some customers about spam.
And the phone system is over 100 years old. All the phone company cared about in the early days was one-way- they cared that you accessed the long distance line, they didn't record who the call was TO. Besides, when these mechanical switches were created- long distance operators were still *manual* switches. You'd call the operator and ask her to connect you and she'd write down the connection. No computer records at all- and at best tracing backwards you might find that five or six people on a given exchange were using the trunk line at the time.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.