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?"

Comments

Gee, stop asking for donations?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

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.

Once again Slashdot is ahead of the pack

[Neil Blender]

What with the modding down of any conservative opinion and what not.

What the hell is the big deal?

[pclminion]

I use Thunderbird's Bayesian spam filter, and guess what? It fucks up sometimes. Usually, it screws up on messages that contain HTML elements (the VAST majority of HTML email I receive is spam, so this is no surprise) or "spammy" words.

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.

Re:What the hell is the big deal?

[krewemaynard]

False-positives are the reason why Thunderbird sends spam to the Junk folder and not directly to the Trash. Yeah, it sucks having to go through that stuff to make sure nothing accidentally got bundled in there, but it's better than a) having it all in the Inbox, and b) losing something important. But the good thing is, it's my choice. If the ISP starts blocking it, I may never know that I lost something that was supposed to get through. At work, that could cost money. Not good.

the political lists could help out

[snorklewacker]

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.