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January 21, 2003
Spam Conference
I've contemplated the problem of SPAM email before. (So far, 590 spam messages this month). Last week the first ever Spam Conference was held at MIT. Little surprise, this is a problem that a lot of people are frustrated with, so attendance and coverage was greater than expected.
Paul Graham gave an excellent presentation on the latest algorithms he has developed. A presentation from Matt Sergeant at MessageLabs also is good; they offer anti-virus, anti-porn and anti-spam filtering as a service. Slashdot posted a good summary of the conference.
I still have found my best results from SpamAssassin, DCC and Vipul's Razor. There is a lot of research happening in this area, and it's really making a difference. Of the 590 spam messages I've received through today, less than 20 weren't filtered. And I could get even better performance with some newer SPAM filtering technology. Maybe technology will make Lawrence Lessig's bold bet unnecessary.
Unfortunately, as Paul Graham points out, the spammers will probably just get smarter and bolder to find new ways to get to us.
Posted by pete at January 21, 2003 08:47 PM
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