Subject: spams n' filters

From: "Matthew Wall" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 13:50:16 -0500

--On Tue, Jan 13, 1998 00:48 -0500 "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]> wrote: 

> the only reason you can really 'filter' spam now is that the
> spammers are pretty lazy and generate obviously bogus messages...
> but they're getting smarter.  filtering could help in the long
> term only if some kind of labelling were mandatory.

One may also observe that adaptive agents, profilers, concordances, and
intelligent agents -- when properly tied to simpler filters -- are coming
along nicely as both anti-spam measures and for more genteel applications.
One arguable philosophical goal may be to avoid the necessity of content
labelling by effectively staying ahead of the spammers, to which I'd again
say that having a basic language in which to describe filtering actions is a
small but useful step.

Anyway, off-topic. There are tons of non-anti-spam applications of Sieve...

- mw

PS I am reminded of Mark (Crispin's) terms for the embedded MTA filters on
his private machine (which issue a variety of hilarious responses) --
"message condoms". Maybe we could avoid further ratholes by calling this the
"Message Prophylactic Language" 8-).

PPS I always thought a good name for the appropriately-focussed company
would be "550 Software".