More on spambayes...

[alexpgp]

My subjective feeling regarding the spambayes spam-filtering software is that it is working, and working better as time goes on. Interestingly enough, a lot of the Nigerian 419 scam letters keep getting through, but that's probably the result of the letters looking so much like legitimate e-mail.

In reviewing incoming spam caught by spambayes, here's a breakdown of how many messages were caught by the spambayes, out of every 10 consecutive spam messages, for the first 300 messages in the file (arranged chronologically):

Messages	# caught	% of spam caught, total	% of spam caught, last 50 msgs
000-010	3	30	-
011-020	6	45	-
021-030	7	53	-
031-040	5	53	-
041-050	2	46	44
051-060	6	48	52
061-070	8	53	56
071-080	5	53	52
081-090	3	50	48
091-100	6	51	56
101-110	5	50	54
111-120	7	52	52
121-130	7	53	56
131-140	4	52	58
141-150	9	55	64
151-160	10	58	74
161-170	6	58	72
171-180	4	57	66
181-190	5	56	68
191-200	8	58	66
201-210	7	58	60
211-220	9	60	66
221-230	6	60	70
231-240	6	60	72
241-250	4	59	64
251-260	7	59	64
261-270	9	60	64
271-280	8	61	68
281-290	9	62	74
291-300	7	62	80

The "dips" correspond to when I check my mail and "train" spambayes by passing a message through its analysis engine, after which it is sent to the spam file.

I get the impression that there is an inexorable creep upward in the trend of spam messages caught by the software. Indeed, I'm noticing that I'm seeing (though I may not actually be receiving) a lot less spam than I used to, and that my main bugaboo right now is messages that aren't spam, but aren't terribly welcome, either. (Just call me Mr. Fussbudget.)

Cheers...

Comments

[volkris.livejournal.com]

I've been feeling for a while that legislation against spam is a mistake of trying to implement a legal solution for a technological problem.

I know my spam filters catch about 90% of it without any tuning and very few false positives. With multiple effective methods for tagging spam, attacking it through new laws is actually kind of lazy. It also goes in the troubling direction of telling people what they can and can't do with the internet connection they're paying for.

My feelings are similar on the legislation against telemarketers: surely we can solve the problem technologically if we really tried.