[clue-tech] Thunderbird junk training

[Greg Knaddison]

On 5/2/06, Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:
> Speaking of spam:
>
> There's a new group doing some very interesting, active fighting of spam.

There are lots of very interesting ideas in this space right now.  I
summarized some of them and my own strategy in a blog post a while ago
- I won't repeat it here in deference to the clue-tech topic...

http://knaddison.com/Penny-for-your-Email



> Last night I received an e-mail from a spammer who came right out and
> said they were a spammer and that they would "fill my inbox with
> thousands of messages" because I was a member of bluesecurity.com's
> service and using it.

This is compelling evidence
1) the service is definitely effective, but has drawbacks because...
2) the spammers are able to figure out which addresses are using the
service (which I pointed out as a design flaw with their plan)

I really like the paul graham punisher mode as a way to fight back. 
Install that as an extension on a couple thousand thunderbird power
user's machines and viola - DOS the spammers without any extra
work/cost :)

> Do I believe it will be effective forever?  No.  Spammers always find a
> way to defeat things.  But it looks like it might be the next leap
> forward in combating spam actively.

I prefer less combative solutions because I don't want to engage in a
battle of wits with the spammers. Spammers are highly motivated, very
smart, and have already proven themselves to be morally flexible -
that's a horrible adversary in my mind!

> As one friend would put it, "It's just getting interesting."

Extremely.

Cheers,
Greg