[Sussex] [OT] Spam verification and filters

[Simon Huggins]

[ This isn't really a rant about Stephen's post just a general head's up ]

On Tue, Nov 01, 2011 at 08:07:45AM +0000, Stephen Williams wrote:
> I found this message in my BTYahoo webmail inbox:

[snip]

Please don't post spam onto a mailing list.

For a start, yes, bad people are indeed out to spam you (and me and
everyone else) and are indeed trying to get at your money.  They're
often trying to get you to buy things but are sometimes more blatent
than that with fake offers of parcels etc.  They also try and get login
details for popular services like banking services and social networking
sites.  Be careful out there.

You might think that warning people of such dangers is doing the
community a service.  However, I use a Bayesian filter to filter my
email.  It learns good mail from bad and I make sure it's learning well.
When it makes mistakes I correct it.  To be honest, it's pretty good and
mostly gets it right.  (I use dspam with a postgres backend for those
interested).  But if you're going to forward actual verbatim spams to
the list then you will start to train it that such phrases are good.

Your one mail won't make a difference but if this list is going to
descend into examples of spam then it might stop being as effective
overall for everyone using such a filter.


You can of course use the Internet against such spammers and scammers:
	http://www.snopes.com
has a good search which turned up
	http://www.snopes.com/fraud/distress/family.asp
when I searched for "mugged hotel bill" going back to the earlier
thread.


http://www.getsafeonline.org/ seems to be one of the government's
efforts and http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1168
describes some threats and
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/InYourHome/KeepingSafeAtHome/DG_10038607
has others and links there.

Worth a quick look and maybe telling people you think are less canny
than yourselves about.

-- 
----------(  "Everybody, everybody's dead, everybody's dead  )----------
----------(                  Dave." - Holly                  )----------
Simon ----(                                                  )---- Nomis
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