Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:18:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Spam filtering (was Re: Capclave)
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

"Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com> wrote:
> Any spam filter that discards, unless ordered to by the recipient,
> is seriously broken.

Early last year, I reluctantly switched from automatically accepting
all email I couldn't find a reason to discard, to automatically
discarding all email I couldn't find a reason to accept.

"Reasons to accept" include any one of:

* It was sent by one of the 11,000+ known good guys.

* It was sent to my current disposable email address.

* It contained any of 849 keywords in the Subject: [WSFA] line, or any
  of 35 keywords on the Organization: line.

This is far from ideal.  Just last month, someone sent me a change-
of-address notice from his *new* email address, and didn't have his
name on the From: line, just the new address.  So I never got it.
We didn't succeed in getting back into contact until he responded
to paper mail from me.

Not coincidentally, his reason for changing email address was that he
was getting too much spam on the old one.  What he was effectively
doing was a more primitive version of what I am doing -- using a
new disposable address, but *not* whitelisting anyone, but instead
deleting unread everything that was sent to the old address.  (The
old address may have sent me a bounce message, but I also block all
bounce messages, since the vast, vast majority of them are bounces
of spams that were forged to have my address on them.)

I'm open to suggestions for better alternatives.

> Tagging and quarantining is fine, but automatic deletion is not
> advisable at all, ...

Panix allows only 75 megabytes.  Even if I stored nothing else on my
Panix account, spams would fill those 75 megs in well under an hour.
And even if I spent 24 hours a day online, I'd need far more than an
hour to scan an hour's spams to see if there were one or two non-spams
hiding among them.  The only remotely practical way for me to scan
them would be to look for familiar names, addresses, or keywords.
And that's exactly what I do, only I do it automatically, not by eye.

> If anyone is running such a system, you are probably losing
> real mail.

I cannot find a way to lose *fewer* real emails.  If you can think of
one, please tell me.

> The problem is that many viruses and worms use addresses stored on
> infected machines to find more machines to attack.  The addresses
> can be in the address book, in mail in the mail folder, or even in
> random disk files.

True.  I blame Bill Gates.

> ... I'd really prefer it if my address wasn't passed on without my
> permission, by anyone.  I know that there are others who feel the
> same way.

It's unfortunate that Microsoft's extremely bad engineering decisions,
together with Congress explicitly legalizing unlimited spam last year
in their notorious "Can Spam" act, has made this a necessity for
everyone not willing to take as extreme measures as I have to keep
email usable.  It's very little consolation to be able to say "I
told you so."  (Three years ago, in rasff, I posted that email with
non-secret non-rapidly changing addresses would be extinct "within
a few years".)

> So now if you ever get investigated by the FBI, each of these people
> can expect a visit to find out what connection they have with you? :-/

Maybe if it was eleven people.  But eleven *thousand*?  I don't think
so.  And that's assuming they were bright enough to even find the
list.  I suspect they'd scratch their head over anything homebrew or
non-Microsoft.  Anyhow, while I do have archived copies of the list
in my apartment and elsewhere, only the copy on Panix is in any sense
active, so tracing code on my home PC wouldn't get them anywhere.

>> * Privacy.  A concern when a message is addressed to "Dear AIDS
>> patients," but not when it's addressed to potential Capclave members.

> In your opinion anyway.  Others may differ...and probably do.  Who
> knows what weird outlooks others might have about being a "known
> SF fan"?

Good point.  I was strongly criticized for not placing a list of all
Capclave members online after the club had decided at a Capclave
meeting that for privacy reasons a list of all Capclave members should
not be placed online.  Sigh.  (We ended up placing a list of all
Capclave members who consented to such placement online, but only
after a lot of unpleasant acrimony.)

> Someone might even lose their job over something like that if it got
> back to their religious fanatic, or English Lit major, boss.  Mostly
> joking there, but one really does never know these days.

True.  Several members or former members of the local cryonics
organization are in the closet for fear that they could lose their
jobs.  These include a lawyer and a cryogenic scientist.

It's long been WSFA policy that street addresses and email addresses
of WSFA members won't be placed online without their permission.
One former WSFAn emailed me to object to his *post office box* being
listed in an address list in an old WSFA Journal.  Sigh.