Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Spam

Everybody's least favorite luncheon meat, time-sink of your e-mail experience and mark of the profound influence of Monty Python on society... ;-)

At work various products are under test to reduce the deluge of useless drivel.
I would have thought the subject line that included 'Marijuana like substance' would have made the cut...

As I was deleting "The book that inspired Mel Gibson's The Passion" (Uhhhh, that would be THE BIBLE...) for the umpteenth time it occurred that there is a bizarre pattern to these things.
Like Survivor, despite my active efforts to know NOTHING about the subject, I have a stream of data force fed to me reflecting the latest marketing fad. My sub-conscious mind duly notes the patterns, the repetitions, the frequencies. Is this affecting me at some level I don't even realize?

Jeff Duntemann has written quite a bit on the subject and this will be his next book project.

http://www.duntemann.com/Diary.htm#current

He has discovered most spammer addresses, while constantly changing, all resolve to a common set of IP addresses. Now what we need is the technology to block based on these server addresses. Jeff is on it. If anyone can get it done, he is the man.

But if we have the spam blocked, will we be losing our feedback on the latest fad?
PopFile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net/) is amazingly good at identifying the junk. A simple rule in Outlook is routing them aside for easy deletion. But I am still seeing the Subject lines as I 'train' PopFile. Saves much time, but still gives me the 'Subject Feed'.

Could anything be learned from tracking Subject line statistics?

Hmmmmmm...... (the chanting increases in volume) Shutup! Stupid Vikings...

http://www.detritus.org/sounds/real/spam-song.ra

Spam! Spa a a a a a a am!
Spa a a a a a am! Lovely Spam!
Lovely Spam!
Spam! Spam! Spam!
Spaaaaaaaaaammmmmm!!!!