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.
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!
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.
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
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.
You would be misinformed. Anything having to do with guns or weapons is a commonly blocked category.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.