[Nottingham] Spam Filtering

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On 27 May 2004, Michael Simms wrote:

> There is a nice system that if everyone used it would be really
> effective, but it is a major drain on the receiver resources.
>
> The system involves scoring a message as it comes in, byte by byte. As
> the message gets scored lower and lower (if it is spam) the system slows
> down its acceptance of the mail so that it can pause for whole minutes
> or even hours between each byte, thus leaving the spammers send system
> with a jammed open connection that from their end is indetectable from
> lag.
>
> That way all emails get received, but spammers have a harder time
> spamming large groups of people and spam becomes a less viable system.
>
> However it only works if everyone does it.
>
> I read about it a year or so ago, it sounds like a good long term
> solution to the problem, but requires a mass of adoption that I dont see
> happening.
>

This assumes you are running a mail server rather than POP/IMAP'ing it from
your ISP.

Given the spammer's propensity for using Own3d boxes all your doing
is draining your resources for little gain (so your holding a port
open on some schmucks worm infested Win98 box, wow big deal).  I can well
imagine the ratio of Own3d boxes to mail servers being quite high.

Presumably you are also opening yourself up to a DOS attack.

Have fun,
Duncan

-- 
Duncan John Fyfe          X-ray Astronomy Group,
                          Dept. of Physics & Astronomy,
Phone +44 116 252 3635    University of Leicester,
E-mail djf at star.le.ac.uk  University Road,
                          Leicester, LE1 7RH, U.K.