Slashdot Mirror
SpamArchive.org No More?
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?"
That sounds like a clever way of:
But hey, maybe I'm just being cynical.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Considering this is the first time I've heard of it, probably not as much as it should have been. Did it help SpamAssassin? If so, then yes, it was.
;)
If it's yet another site that finally went by the wayside because no one was using it, maintaining it, or interested in it; then it might have already served its purpose and has been retired.
The Internet moves fast and new things come along all the time to replace those things that are outdated and old. Some might say that about digg and Slashdot though
Just provide your email address, and I'll be happy to provide you with a FREE feed of my spam archive. No need to thank me, just a little service I provide.
A second issue is that you want current spam; the global characteristics of spam change from week to week. So what's the use of an ancient archive?
And perhaps the biggest problem is that SpamArchive is a hodge-podge of mail from different sources, vetted only by the people who send it in. It isn't a sample of spam in any statistical sense.
Finally, there is no scarcity of spam. Ham is what people don't want to share.
So a collection of spam, particularly an old one sent in by self-selected volunteers, is of little practical use. The hard thing to get is a collection of spam and ham from a common place.
The TREC tests use private corpora that have legitimate mixes of ham and spam. They also use public corpora in which the spam has been carefully spoofed to make it appear to have been sent to the same recipients as the ham. Collecting the spam for the corpus was easy; spoofing was not.
Was it a little bit like Archive.org?
I know I'd be interested in finding out how badly people needed more inches and V!agr4 in the good ol' days.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
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
...the cost of penetrating the defenses of the savvy user is much higher than just spooging "Buy! V|AGr4 N0W!@" emails all over the place, hoping some of them 'stick'...
So the odds of them bothering are lower, though not completely out of the picture. They just keep upping the ante once the clever ones pass down effective answers to block/bounce the damn stuff to the less clever people because it's not gotten too expensive for these monkeys to stop flinging the electronic poo around.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
According to Justin Mason, it didn't help SpamAssassin much, at least where testing the effectiveness of rules was concerned. The main problems were that (1) the data was too anonymized to be able to properly test header checks and (2) submissions weren't verified, meaning someone would have to go through the archive and check to make sure there wasn't any legit mail that had accidentally been dropped into the wrong folder. (And, of course, unless you're the original recipient, you can't be absolutely certain whether something was solicited or not.)
Considering that the Netcraft uptime list shows a change of hosting/ip, chances are they forgot to renew and the domain was immediately squatted.
___
*insert sig here*
You obviously have never eaten SPAM, otherwise you'd never have classified it as "food".
the original hosting company went under and its bits and pieces got swished around and sold and resold and one day you look up and nothing is like you left it, and the process for resolution requires actual pieces of paper, an adventure in the big room, and oh so much judicial bs.
sonofabitch!
I have no timetable for the resolution of the particular issue, as it is high on the headache scale and low on the business critical scale.
--adam