The problem with blacklists and false positives

[Derek Broughton]

Amedee Van Gasse (ubuntu) wrote:

> Brian McKee schreef:
>> 
>> There's nothing sensible you can do about this - identity on the
>> internet is slippery
>> (and many people prefer it that way)
>> 
>> OTOH, it would be one pain in the neck vs say four list admins.  I'm
>> sure the problem poster
>> will give up resubscribing before the admins give up blocking him/her.

Not likely. It's too easy to subscribe.

>> Filtering by automated content matching will not work.  Too many false
>> positives, and too many
>> ways around it.  How many different ways do the spammers discuss the
>> size of your <xxx> ?

And doesn't your software catch it?  I get almost no spam these days.  If 
bogofilter was used, and allowed to either pass posts or direct them to 
moderators, it would quickly become quite reliable.
> 
> What are you going to do if the topic of a mail thread is spam and spam
> prevention, and you are discussing a particular spam incident?

Be wery, wery careful...
> 
> I think spam is a valid subject for Ubuntu, for example someone who
> installs spamassassin and wants to know why a certain spam didn't get
> tagged.

Yes, that's always tricky (I actually remember exactly this situation - must 
have been on the Exim developers list), but you can always post careful 
descriptions while posting links to the actual offending message.
-- 
derek