I just read a very interesting report on the Anti-Spam conference that just took place at the MIT.
It contains some very interesting comments that are guaranteed to keep spam filter developers busy for quite a while, such as:
He found that randomly deleting a few words gave a 3x improvement in accuracy.
or how some servers can be used as “tar pits” to spammers in order to make their life more difficult:
451-Your spam is important to us. Please stay on the line.
451-Your spam is important to us. Please stay on the line.
451-Your spam is important to us. Please stay on the line.
although some other proposals such as:
To simplify a little bit, you use an address until it starts getting spam. As soon as that account gets its first piece of spam, you “lock” it so that anybody who has sent you mail to that address in the past can keep using that address; anyone else gets rejected at the server.
look dubious to me since they don’t address the main problem of spam today: how can we protect our existing email addresses from the incoming downpour.