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SpamArchive.org No More?

Posted by Hemos on from the where-have-all-the-cowboys-gone dept.

IrishMASMS writes "Back on November 21, 2002 Slashdot announced SpamArchive.org had just been launched. I configured my spam filters to submit to these guys. Well, the last few I have sent rejected; giving a 553 (sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts) error. Did some digging, and come to find out the SpamArchive.org site is just a placeholder; and the WHOIS shows virtualclicks.com aka PSI-USA, Inc. dba Domain Robot aka a Robert Farris now owns the domain. Some searching on the net indicates the fellow is a domain squatter. Anyone know the story as to what happened, and if the Spam Archive project is now dead? Was the Spam Archive project even a benefit or value added to the fight against spam?"

7 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Fishy... by inviolet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I configured my spam filters to submit to these guys.

    That sounds like a clever way of:

    • finding out which email addresses are 'live', and
    • tweaking a new spamification algorithm to see what penetrates the savviest users' filters.

    But hey, maybe I'm just being cynical.

    --
    FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
    1. Re:Fishy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well if a spam archive is to be any good, it needs to have no false positives in it at all. Configuring a filter to send to the archive might seem like a good idea, but then it's not a spam archive, it's a spam filter output archive. Historically interesting to someone, no doubt, but it can't help improve spam filters if spam filters feed it.

      Maybe that's what killed the idea?

    2. Re:Fishy... by FuzzyDaddy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because the person configuring the filter may not be the same person using email?

      --
      It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
    3. Re:Fishy... by PFI_Optix · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As I understand it, professional spammers get paid per e-mail, so the more legitimate e-mails they can spam the more they get paid.

      --
      120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
    4. Re:Fishy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      > As I understand it, professional spammers get paid per e-mail

      Not anymore. At best they get a fee per click-through (and the clickthrough rate must really suck these days with all the obfu they have to do). But the usual structure nowadays is commission. Yes, people are still buying from spam.

  2. What use was an archive? by gsslay · · Score: 4, Interesting
    No-one cares what spam got through filters last year. No ones cares even what spam got through last week. The spam menace lurches on so quickly that the only thing of interest is what's getting through right now, today. Analysing anything older than that is pointless.


    And, as others have pointed out, a big slab of spam is useless for research unless you have equal amounts of real email to compare against.


    So no wonder it didn't last.

  3. ipfilter too. by emptybody · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ipfilter.org is similarly going to a domin squatting link page.
    i need a filter that notices these bogus pages and blocks them.

    --
    comment directly in my journal