[Gllug] Testing spam filter

[John G Walker]

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:29:03 +0000 "Martin A. Brooks"
<martin at hinterlands.org> wrote:

> John G Walker wrote:
> > Thus confirming to the spammers that they have a genuine email
> > address to sell on.
> >     
> 
> Umm, no it doesn't.  They would get no more information than "we
> think your email is spam".  It says nothing about whether the mailbox
> exists or not.

Hmmm. I don't really think I want do such things to the 430 spam
emails I received last week, or the similar number I'll receive next
week or the week after. They don't deserve it, and this would
constitute the major part of my email transmissions if I did reply to
them.

On the other hand, I don't want to overstate my case. I did once
receive a message from a certain British University that my email to
one of their staff was considered spam. I queried this, and it turned
out that it had been rejected because it contained the word
"socialist", which, if you look carefully, contains the string
"cialis". As a result of my query, they changed their filter to check
for the word "cialis" rather than the string.

So maybe institutions should send out messages. But I don't think I
want to put myself to the effort. Those 430 messages go straight in
the junk folder, never to be seen or accessed unless I want to use them
for retraining,

-- 
 All the best,
 John
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug