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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?"

14 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 deafpluckin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      I don't think spammers care about clever users. Clever users are more likely to not be taken in by "Buy! V|AGr4 N0W!@" and whatnot so worrying about how to penetrate their defenses is pointless.
    2. Re:Fishy... by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But if you can penetrate the defences of a savvy user you can penetrate the defences of the kind of person who -would- click on a "Buy! V|AGr4 N0W!@" email.

    3. Re:Fishy... by Aladrin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not entirely true, because these 'clever users' are actually 'clever system admins' that are creating new ways to make sure SPAM doesn't get to their users. So the SPAMmers really do care about them quite a lot.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
    4. 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.
  2. Spam archive? I've got your archive right here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. Spam Archive of limited use by gvc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Spam filters do a differential comparision between ham and spam. If the ham and spam are taken from different places, the difference between the source of the messages overwhelms the difference between the ham and the spam.

    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.

  4. Spam Archive by saskboy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  5. 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.

    1. Re:What use was an archive? by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ``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.''

      You sound so sure, but I think you're wrong. I think at least some filtering techniques benefit from more data points. And, very naively thinking, I would think that it's better to train my filter to recognize _all_ spam and _all_ ham, not just today's.

      I know from personal experience that my spam filter (mailvisa) does a good job recognizing next week's spam when I train it with the past month's. This doesn't totally invalidate your point that recent spam differs from old spam, and thus, training with recent spam is better, but it does show that your timeframes are a bit too constrained.

      --
      Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  6. 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
  7. Re:Was it a benefit? Don't know, never heard of it by Kelson · · Score: 3, Informative

    Considering this is the first time I've heard of it, probably not as much as it should have been. Did it help SpamAssassin

    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.)

  8. Netcraft report by Vivieus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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*
  9. Re:The problem is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    All this talk about penetrating and Viagra is making me feel uncomfortable...