You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com> on 2011/01/18 07:52:58 UTC
Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Hi folks,
Here is an opportunity for non-developers to do simple tasks to help
improve Spamassassin.
I am seeking volunteers to help me build and administrate a "ham trap".
The idea is to subscribe a list of unique e-mail addresses to various
retailers, airlines, government and other legitimate bulk mail senders.
A sufficient variety of ham trap subscriptions should increase the
variety of legitimate senders represented in nightly masscheck and thus
improve the safety of Spamassassin's rules.
Benefits of the Ham Trap
========================
* Creation of an automated, synthetic source to build a corpus of very
recent ham for the nightly masscheck. Ham trap data will be expired
from the masscheck after 3 months. This will be fairly easy to maintain
in a 99% automated fashion, ensuring a constant stream of fresh data for
the nightly masscheck largely without the need for human sorting.
* Help to identify legitimate bulk senders who are performing poorly
with spamassassin. Our data may help legitimate senders to modify their
mail practices to avoid spamminess.
* Each subscription is a unique tracked address. This will make it
possible to definitively identify bulk senders who violate their
customer's privacy by selling their e-mail address list to others.
There isn't much we can do about these cases other than shame them on a
web page, but for spam fighters this is useful information.
Examples of Subscriptions
=========================
* Online Retailers - offers, coupons, etc.
* Airlines - offers, fare alerts, etc.
* Government - newsletters, emergency alerts, street sweeping reminders,
etc.
* Non-Profits - newsletters, begging for donations, etc.
* Announce Lists are good.
* Discussion Lists are a BAD IDEA.
* Some subscriptions have the option to opt-in to "partner" offers.
Always decline these.
Current Retail Subscriptions: llbean.com, lapolicegear.com, zappos.com,
armaniexchange.com, gucci.com, ralphlauren.com, jimmychoo.com,
coach.com, chanel.com, louisvuitton.com, prada.com, diorcouture.com, ysl.com
I will have a website soon listing all current subscriptions so we can
avoid duplicates.
Volunteer Tasks
===============
Volunteers live in different states and countries, so they are exposed
to different regional and local subscription opportunities. For this
reason we need input from many different people to make the ham trap
representative of the world.
* EASY: Simply prepare a list of reputable sites you think I should
subscribe to. Local government/companies in your area would be
especially good. Myself or a volunteer will handle it.
* EASY: Using a list of e-mail addresses, subscribe to reputable sites
and record each site to the corresponding e-mail address. This requires
no access to my server although I need to trust you to keep accurate
records and keep the e-mail addresses secret.
* MEDIUM: Read the ham trap inbox. Write procmail rules to
automatically sort certain known senders to a specific address as Ham.
Manually sort past unclassified mail as Ham or Spam. This requires IMAP
and ssh access to my server. This group will be small due to the level
of required trust.
Procmail rules ensure that ham corpus mail actually came from the
desired sender. All else is put into a separate Unsorted folder for
human identification. The Unsorted folder becomes smaller and the
process becomes more automated over time as the procmail rules are crafted.
Please let me know if you are able to help!
Warren Togami
warren@togami.com
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by John Wilcock <jo...@tradoc.fr>.
Le 18/01/2011 10:46, Jeff Chan a écrit :
> 2. Some of the areas are very difficult to resolve into spam or
> ham. Some more aggressive anti-spammers may say all of the above
> is spam, but others may disagree, and the mail may be legal.
I'd suggest that SA ought to be classifying e-mail in *three* broad
categories, not two.
Firstly, definite spam, unsolicited in any way.
Secondly, definite ham (i.e. primarily genuine person-to-person e-mail
and actively solicited messages such as confirmations of website
transactions), which even the most aggressive spam-fighters would agree
is ham. FPs in this category are bad news.
And thirdly, an in-between category, of which opt-in advertising is a
prime example, which at least some users are happy to receive, but where
FPs aren't a major problem.
With a few relatively rare exceptions, SA already classifies these
categories pretty effectively, especially with a well-trained bayesian
db. Genuine ham tends to come in with negative scores, occasionally
straying up to about 1 or 2. Likewise, undisputed spam rarely scores
less than 8 or 10. And opt-in advertising typically comes in with
"neutral" scores of 0 to 4. So far, so good.
Using this opt-in advertising, which IMO ought to be getting neutral
scores, as a ham corpus, is inevitably going to be problematic. Using it
as a third, neutral corpus that is given far less weight than genuine
ham would be a different matter, but would require a major change in the
the scoring algorithms.
John.
--
-- Over 4000 webcams from ski resorts around the world - www.snoweye.com
-- Translate your technical documents and web pages - www.tradoc.fr
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 01/18/2011 11:49 PM, Jeff Chan wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 4:59:05 AM, Warren Jr. wrote:
>
>> * Yes, we cannot be 100% sure our opt-in was only for that particular
>> site and not their "partners". But in any case automatic ham trapped
>> mail will be only the mail branded by the subscribed provider, because
>> that is the only mail we know for sure was opted-in. Anything else is
>> kept separate for later analysis.
>
>> * If clearly spammy other mail arrives at a particular address, the
>> original subscription can be unsubscribed and the continued flow
>> monitored. That address could then be discarded.
>
> Both seem reasonable approaches.
>
> Those degenerate cases of both are indeed interesting.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff C.
Yes, I think this is a reasonably simple and effective plan. I only
need volunteers to help me find appropriate sites and to help subscribe.
It is very boring to do all this myself.
Warren
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Jeff Chan <je...@surbl.org>.
On Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 4:59:05 AM, Warren Jr. wrote:
> * Yes, we cannot be 100% sure our opt-in was only for that particular
> site and not their "partners". But in any case automatic ham trapped
> mail will be only the mail branded by the subscribed provider, because
> that is the only mail we know for sure was opted-in. Anything else is
> kept separate for later analysis.
> * If clearly spammy other mail arrives at a particular address, the
> original subscription can be unsubscribed and the continued flow
> monitored. That address could then be discarded.
Both seem reasonable approaches.
Those degenerate cases of both are indeed interesting.
Cheers,
Jeff C.
--
Jeff Chan
mailto:jeffc@surbl.org
http://www.surbl.org/
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Justin Mason <jm...@jmason.org>.
On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 12:59, Warren Togami Jr. <wt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/17/2011 11:46 PM, Jeff Chan wrote:
>>
>> So a couple points:
>>
>> 1. Subscribing to lists opens up lots of grey areas including
>> the above.
>>
>> 2. Some of the areas are very difficult to resolve into spam or
>> ham. Some more aggressive anti-spammers may say all of the above
>> is spam, but others may disagree, and the mail may be legal.
>>
>> Before anyone accuses me of being in favor of spammers, please be
>> aware that I am personally highly against any of these unethical
>> practices, but when essentially making decisions for others, one
>> needs to be very careful and consider whether there may be legitimate,
>> ethical, legal or even wanted uses of such things. One person's
>> ham may be another persons spam, and vice versa. However, most
>> people don't want the stuff bots send.
>>
>> The issue is complex, and there are many deliverability, security
>> and anti-spam companies and organizations that struggle with these
>> issues every day. Maintaining accurate ham and spam corpora and
>> making policies for what belongs in which category is trivial in
>> some easy cases like bot pill spam, but non-trivial in other
>> cases.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Jeff C.
>
> I appreciate the nuanced feedback but I have thought of similar
> considerations. I believe the following will help to avoid ambiguity and
> legal issues.
>
> * Yes, we cannot be 100% sure our opt-in was only for that particular site
> and not their "partners". But in any case automatic ham trapped mail will
> be only the mail branded by the subscribed provider, because that is the
> only mail we know for sure was opted-in. Anything else is kept separate for
> later analysis.
>
> * If clearly spammy other mail arrives at a particular address, the original
> subscription can be unsubscribed and the continued flow monitored. That
> address could then be discarded.
+1 to those. tagged addressing makes this easy to implement (and track).
I use this approach on a very small scale for a small number of ham newsletters
in my own corpus...
--j.
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 1/17/2011 11:46 PM, Jeff Chan wrote:
>
> So a couple points:
>
> 1. Subscribing to lists opens up lots of grey areas including
> the above.
>
> 2. Some of the areas are very difficult to resolve into spam or
> ham. Some more aggressive anti-spammers may say all of the above
> is spam, but others may disagree, and the mail may be legal.
>
> Before anyone accuses me of being in favor of spammers, please be
> aware that I am personally highly against any of these unethical
> practices, but when essentially making decisions for others, one
> needs to be very careful and consider whether there may be legitimate,
> ethical, legal or even wanted uses of such things. One person's
> ham may be another persons spam, and vice versa. However, most
> people don't want the stuff bots send.
>
> The issue is complex, and there are many deliverability, security
> and anti-spam companies and organizations that struggle with these
> issues every day. Maintaining accurate ham and spam corpora and
> making policies for what belongs in which category is trivial in
> some easy cases like bot pill spam, but non-trivial in other
> cases.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff C.
I appreciate the nuanced feedback but I have thought of similar
considerations. I believe the following will help to avoid ambiguity
and legal issues.
* Yes, we cannot be 100% sure our opt-in was only for that particular
site and not their "partners". But in any case automatic ham trapped
mail will be only the mail branded by the subscribed provider, because
that is the only mail we know for sure was opted-in. Anything else is
kept separate for later analysis.
* If clearly spammy other mail arrives at a particular address, the
original subscription can be unsubscribed and the continued flow
monitored. That address could then be discarded.
Warren
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 01/20/2011 11:31 AM, Bowie Bailey wrote:
>
> Public discussion lists are bit different. In that case, it is the
> individual post that is being considered spam rather than considering
> the list spammy. Since there is no overall control over the content of
> the posts, public lists are vulnerable to being filled with spam if the
> list owners are not paying attention.
For this reason, the ham trap will not be subscribed to any discussion
lists.
>
> When you sign up for a company's email list, you get whatever they
> decide to send you. If they decide to start sending marketing to the
> list, I would not consider that spam because they own the list and they
> can decide what to use it for. The recipients signed up to get that
> company's emails and if they no longer want to receive them, they can
> unsubscribe. And as I said before, if the unsubscribe function doesn't
> work, then the emails become spam (regardless of the actual content).
>
Your understanding is exactly correct.
Warren
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by Martin Gregorie <ma...@gregorie.org>.
On Thu, 2011-01-20 at 21:50 -0800, Jeff Chan wrote:
> Yes and no. If you sign up for Joe's Bagel Company mailing list
> to find out about the latest Bagel news, and some new marketing
> guy joins the Bagel company and starts sending marketing messages
> about Bananas to that list, then the original purpose of the list
> and what you thought you signed up for has been corrupted. Most
> people would consider the latter to be spam, and rightly so.
>
That's exactly what I what I was saying about BT. I'm signed up for a
list whose stated purpose is to send billing and service change
notifications about their phone service, but BT's marketing department
suddenly started using it to flog broadband. I think most people would
consider these sales messages to be spam and the BT sales department to
be spammers.
Under these circumstances I would *not* expect the list to get a
Pure-Ham rating.
Martin
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by Jeff Chan <je...@surbl.org>.
On Thursday, January 20, 2011, 1:31:50 PM, Bowie Bailey wrote:
> On 1/20/2011 4:17 PM, David F. Skoll wrote:
> When you sign up for a company's email list, you get whatever they
> decide to send you. If they decide to start sending marketing to the
> list, I would not consider that spam because they own the list and they
> can decide what to use it for. The recipients signed up to get that
> company's emails and if they no longer want to receive them, they can
> unsubscribe. And as I said before, if the unsubscribe function doesn't
> work, then the emails become spam (regardless of the actual content).
Yes and no. If you sign up for Joe's Bagel Company mailing list
to find out about the latest Bagel news, and some new marketing
guy joins the Bagel company and starts sending marketing messages
about Bananas to that list, then the original purpose of the list
and what you thought you signed up for has been corrupted. Most
people would consider the latter to be spam, and rightly so.
OTOH if the Bagel company decides to send non-Bagel messages to a
Bagel specific list, then one knows exactly:
1. Who to blame
2. Where to unsubscribe
3. What went wrong
etc.
So at least there is a responsible party to hopefully act on
unsubscriptions, fire the spammy marketer, etc. It's sort of a
degenerate case of the degenerate case of email addresses going
to to a third party, except it's the same party.
Spam is easy. Ham is hard.
Cheers,
Jeff C.
--
Jeff Chan
mailto:jeffc@surbl.org
http://www.surbl.org/
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by "David F. Skoll" <df...@roaringpenguin.com>.
On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:31:50 -0500
Bowie Bailey <Bo...@BUC.com> wrote:
> When you sign up for a company's email list, you get whatever they
> decide to send you.
OK. I guess we'll agree to disagree on our definitions, then.
Regards,
David.
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by Bowie Bailey <Bo...@BUC.com>.
On 1/20/2011 4:17 PM, David F. Skoll wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:12:58 -0500
> Bowie Bailey <Bo...@BUC.com> wrote:
>
>> Of course it is. You subscribed to it. If you don't want it anymore,
>> unsubscribe.
> I disagree. When you subscribe to a list, there's an implicit understanding
> of the content you are signing up for. If the list owner violates the rules
> and posts marketing material, that's spam.
>
> Concrete example: If I posted an ad for our commercial anti-spam system
> on the MIMEDefang list, that would be spam. If I posted it on this list,
> it would be spam-squared and I'd probably be banned. :)
Public discussion lists are bit different. In that case, it is the
individual post that is being considered spam rather than considering
the list spammy. Since there is no overall control over the content of
the posts, public lists are vulnerable to being filled with spam if the
list owners are not paying attention.
When you sign up for a company's email list, you get whatever they
decide to send you. If they decide to start sending marketing to the
list, I would not consider that spam because they own the list and they
can decide what to use it for. The recipients signed up to get that
company's emails and if they no longer want to receive them, they can
unsubscribe. And as I said before, if the unsubscribe function doesn't
work, then the emails become spam (regardless of the actual content).
--
Bowie
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by "David F. Skoll" <df...@roaringpenguin.com>.
On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:12:58 -0500
Bowie Bailey <Bo...@BUC.com> wrote:
> Of course it is. You subscribed to it. If you don't want it anymore,
> unsubscribe.
I disagree. When you subscribe to a list, there's an implicit understanding
of the content you are signing up for. If the list owner violates the rules
and posts marketing material, that's spam.
Concrete example: If I posted an ad for our commercial anti-spam system
on the MIMEDefang list, that would be spam. If I posted it on this list,
it would be spam-squared and I'd probably be banned. :)
Regards,
David.
Re: What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by Bowie Bailey <Bo...@BUC.com>.
On 1/20/2011 4:10 PM, David F. Skoll wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:06:31 -1000
> "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ham is a lot easier to define than Spam. Ham is simply anything that
>> you subscribed for.
> Not necessarily. You could subscribe to a list expecting it to contain
> useful content. A few months later, the organization running the list
> might decide to change what it posts and start posting undesired marketing
> information on the list.
>
> Is that still ham?
Of course it is. You subscribed to it. If you don't want it anymore,
unsubscribe.
If you unsubscribe and they keep sending it anyway, THEN it becomes spam.
--
Bowie
What is Ham? (was Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap)
Posted by "David F. Skoll" <df...@roaringpenguin.com>.
On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:06:31 -1000
"Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ham is a lot easier to define than Spam. Ham is simply anything that
> you subscribed for.
Not necessarily. You could subscribe to a list expecting it to contain
useful content. A few months later, the organization running the list
might decide to change what it posts and start posting undesired marketing
information on the list.
Is that still ham?
Regards,
David.
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Daniel McDonald <da...@austinenergy.com>.
On 2/8/11 3:15 AM, "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm somewhat annoyed by the armchair quarterback negative comments on
> this topic. (Not just you) didn't read the rest of this thread to
> realize this particular concern is moot.
Ditto. I don't really have time to participate in this activity, but the
methodology is sound and provides a needed source of ham. Many people want
these opt-in lists, and I don't want to block them.
> None of the people complaining
> about how this is such a bad idea are being helpful by actually
> participate in the nightly masscheck.
I do participate in masschecks, primarily because I have a lot of mail from
politicians (campaign pieces, updates from my congressman, notes from party
officials, and the like) that was getting flagged as spam even though it is
clearly opt in, and unsubscribing is clear and simple. The main corpus used
in masschecks is the mail for a bunch of techies, and I had a divergent set
of mail from this other interest in my life. Warren's project extends that
concept much further than just the side-interests of a couple of us
nerds/wonks.
>
> Talk is cheap. I'm actually doing something.
Keep it up!
>
> Warren
--
Daniel J McDonald, CCIE # 2495, CISSP # 78281
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 02/07/2011 05:37 PM, Mahmoud Khonji wrote:
> On 01/21/2011 01:06 AM, Warren Togami Jr. wrote:
>> On 1/20/2011 7:23 AM, R - elists wrote:
>>
>>> initially this came across as a really suspect idea...
>>>
>>> i.e., one man's junk is another man's treasure
>>
>> Ham is a lot easier to define than Spam. Ham is simply anything that
>> you subscribed for.
>>
>
> I am currently subscribed to number of mailing lists to collect ham
> emails (in addition to other sources). While it might be true that
> mailing lists can be good sources of ham, their emails do not contain
> realistic diversity of features/characteristics.
I explicitly excluded discussion mailing lists from the ham trap.
>
> In my view, the issue is not just insuring an email is ham, but also
> insuring that it contains realistic set of features. If the features are
> not realistic, and if we optimize tests scores based on that, then we
> might end up worsening test scores for realistic end-users.
Not if it is subscribed to hundreds of opt-in subscriptions for
legitimate mail that ordinary users receive, most of which is otherwise
not represented in the corpora. Many of these subscriptions send mail
only once a week or month.
It is true that the hamtrap corpus is synthetic and thus not fully
representative in frequencies of real ham. But its volume is only a
tiny fraction of a percent of our total ham. It helps us to detect and
fix problems in individual rules by injecting some variety without
causing a measurable impact on the entire corpus.
>
> For example, most list emails are non-HTML. While most end-user ham and
> spam emails are HTML. Evaluating sets of features (or tests) based on
> this unrealistic corpus is likely to fools us into thinking that a
> feature/test is more effective that what it is in reality (i.e. we might
> end up giving MIME-based tests higher scores).
The spec and implementation of this ham trap already took this and many
other issues into consideration. We've already had a few experts here
conclude the plan is sound.
I'm somewhat annoyed by the armchair quarterback negative comments on
this topic. (Not just you) didn't read the rest of this thread to
realize this particular concern is moot. None of the people complaining
about how this is such a bad idea are being helpful by actually
participate in the nightly masscheck.
Talk is cheap. I'm actually doing something.
Warren
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Mahmoud Khonji <m...@khonji.org>.
On 01/21/2011 01:06 AM, Warren Togami Jr. wrote:
> On 1/20/2011 7:23 AM, R - elists wrote:
>
>> initially this came across as a really suspect idea...
>>
>> i.e., one man's junk is another man's treasure
>
> Ham is a lot easier to define than Spam. Ham is simply anything that
> you subscribed for.
>
I am currently subscribed to number of mailing lists to collect ham
emails (in addition to other sources). While it might be true that
mailing lists can be good sources of ham, their emails do not contain
realistic diversity of features/characteristics.
In my view, the issue is not just insuring an email is ham, but also
insuring that it contains realistic set of features. If the features are
not realistic, and if we optimize tests scores based on that, then we
might end up worsening test scores for realistic end-users.
For example, most list emails are non-HTML. While most end-user ham and
spam emails are HTML. Evaluating sets of features (or tests) based on
this unrealistic corpus is likely to fools us into thinking that a
feature/test is more effective that what it is in reality (i.e. we might
end up giving MIME-based tests higher scores).
Mahmoud
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 1/20/2011 7:23 AM, R - elists wrote:
> initially this came across as a really suspect idea...
>
> i.e., one man's junk is another man's treasure
Ham is a lot easier to define than Spam. Ham is simply anything that
you subscribed for.
>
> for a moment, it appeared we were gonna need to review the good and the bad
> of spam-l to avoid serious SA list issues.
>
> statistically speaking, this shouldnt sway the scoring substantially anyways
> would it?
You are correct. This is more of a tool to have *some* variety in the
ham corpus, to make it possible to flag rules in need of scrutiny. For
example, prior to 3.3.x many of our rules were utterly broken with
Japanese mail. We had no idea of this fact until I added a few thousand
Japanese mail to the ham corpus. JM understood the problem and fixed
those rules.
>
> what should be known so that bad data is not allowed into the HAM corpus ?
>
The previous discussion described a sort of "tagged sender" ham trap.
This simple process automatically excludes extraneous mail in cases
where the address was shared with "affiliates" or spammer lists. We
also will be careful in sticking to reputable companies and orgs for the
ham trap.
Warren
RE: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by R - elists <li...@abbacomm.net>.
>
> This is a misunderstanding. I am largely against
> whitelisting or negative score rules. I merely intend to
> increase the variety of legitimate mail in the nightly ham
> corpus so our spam-hostile rules can be better tested for
> safety. This will be interesting especially with non-English ham.
>
> Warren
>
Warren,
so, are you going to keep two or more corpus datasets?
one as it is, and one with the new for comparison?
initially this came across as a really suspect idea...
i.e., one man's junk is another man's treasure
for a moment, it appeared we were gonna need to review the good and the bad
of spam-l to avoid serious SA list issues.
statistically speaking, this shouldnt sway the scoring substantially anyways
would it?
what should be known so that bad data is not allowed into the HAM corpus ?
- rh
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 1/18/2011 1:15 AM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-01-18 at 01:46 -0800, Jeff Chan wrote:
>
>> While I certainly would encourage improving ham and spam corpora,
>> this proposal may open up a lot of grey areas that may be
>> non-trivial to resolve.
>>
> Agreed, and some companies will get to you sign up for accounting and
> service problem notifications and then pump advertising down the channel
> in such volume that the purpose for which you signed up seems utterly
> forgotten.
>
> British Telecom sets a bad example here: they even behave like a spammer
> inasmuch as they regularly vary their promotions text to dodge spam
> filters. I'd be worried that if word gets around that SA is developing
> rules that give signed-up bulk mail a free ride then a lot more
> companies will do the same.
This is a misunderstanding. I am largely against whitelisting or
negative score rules. I merely intend to increase the variety of
legitimate mail in the nightly ham corpus so our spam-hostile rules can
be better tested for safety. This will be interesting especially with
non-English ham.
Warren
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Martin Gregorie <ma...@gregorie.org>.
On Tue, 2011-01-18 at 01:46 -0800, Jeff Chan wrote:
> While I certainly would encourage improving ham and spam corpora,
> this proposal may open up a lot of grey areas that may be
> non-trivial to resolve.
>
Agreed, and some companies will get to you sign up for accounting and
service problem notifications and then pump advertising down the channel
in such volume that the purpose for which you signed up seems utterly
forgotten.
British Telecom sets a bad example here: they even behave like a spammer
inasmuch as they regularly vary their promotions text to dodge spam
filters. I'd be worried that if word gets around that SA is developing
rules that give signed-up bulk mail a free ride then a lot more
companies will do the same.
Martin
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Jeff Chan <je...@surbl.org>.
On Monday, January 17, 2011, 10:52:58 PM, Warren Jr. wrote:
> Hi folks,
> Here is an opportunity for non-developers to do simple tasks to help
> improve Spamassassin.
> I am seeking volunteers to help me build and administrate a "ham trap".
> The idea is to subscribe a list of unique e-mail addresses to various
> retailers, airlines, government and other legitimate bulk mail senders.
> A sufficient variety of ham trap subscriptions should increase the
> variety of legitimate senders represented in nightly masscheck and thus
> improve the safety of Spamassassin's rules.
> Benefits of the Ham Trap
> ========================
> * Creation of an automated, synthetic source to build a corpus of very
> recent ham for the nightly masscheck. Ham trap data will be expired
> from the masscheck after 3 months. This will be fairly easy to maintain
> in a 99% automated fashion, ensuring a constant stream of fresh data for
> the nightly masscheck largely without the need for human sorting.
> * Help to identify legitimate bulk senders who are performing poorly
> with spamassassin. Our data may help legitimate senders to modify their
> mail practices to avoid spamminess.
> * Each subscription is a unique tracked address. This will make it
> possible to definitively identify bulk senders who violate their
> customer's privacy by selling their e-mail address list to others.
> There isn't much we can do about these cases other than shame them on a
> web page, but for spam fighters this is useful information.
While I certainly would encourage improving ham and spam corpora,
this proposal may open up a lot of grey areas that may be
non-trivial to resolve.
Some of the legitimate mailing lists that sell, share or rent
their addresses to third party senders may be doing so legally if
it's permitted in the terms of use one agrees to when signing up.
Obviously such a practice is questionable at best in terms of
ethics, but it may be technically legal. There are also
"affiliate marketing programs" explicitly based on sharing "opt
in" lists which may be even less ethical and apparently have many
abusers. Such things may be legal while being unethical.
So a couple points:
1. Subscribing to lists opens up lots of grey areas including
the above.
2. Some of the areas are very difficult to resolve into spam or
ham. Some more aggressive anti-spammers may say all of the above
is spam, but others may disagree, and the mail may be legal.
Before anyone accuses me of being in favor of spammers, please be
aware that I am personally highly against any of these unethical
practices, but when essentially making decisions for others, one
needs to be very careful and consider whether there may be legitimate,
ethical, legal or even wanted uses of such things. One person's
ham may be another persons spam, and vice versa. However, most
people don't want the stuff bots send.
The issue is complex, and there are many deliverability, security
and anti-spam companies and organizations that struggle with these
issues every day. Maintaining accurate ham and spam corpora and
making policies for what belongs in which category is trivial in
some easy cases like bot pill spam, but non-trivial in other
cases.
Cheers,
Jeff C.
--
Jeff Chan
mailto:jeffc@surbl.org
http://www.surbl.org/
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com>.
On 01/18/2011 03:25 PM, Dave Pooser wrote:
> On 1/18/11 12:52 AM, "Warren Togami Jr."<wt...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am seeking volunteers to help me build and administrate a "ham trap".
>> The idea is to subscribe a list of unique e-mail addresses to various
>> retailers, airlines, government and other legitimate bulk mail senders.
>
> The possible fly in the ointment I see is that you wouldn't necessarily have
> access to some sorts of transactional emails-- airline flight reminders and
> things of that nature. Would that be something where you'd be interested in
> getting mail cc:ed to a hamtrap address? For example, I use tagged email
> addresses for different airlines, and it would be trivial for me to have my
> server relay those messages to a hamtrap address as well as delivering to my
> personal email if that sort of thing would be useful.
You are correct that this isn't transactional mail. It is however
low-effort automatic collection of a subset of ham that real users
receive, much of which we are entirely missing from the nightly corpus.
https://fedorahosted.org/auto-mass-check/
As for the ham you suggest, I highly suggest running your own nightly
masscheck and uploading logs. This avoids privacy problems and allows
you to check/correct quality issues in your own corpus.
Warren
Re: Need Volunteers for Ham Trap
Posted by Dave Pooser <da...@pooserville.com>.
On 1/18/11 12:52 AM, "Warren Togami Jr." <wt...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am seeking volunteers to help me build and administrate a "ham trap".
> The idea is to subscribe a list of unique e-mail addresses to various
> retailers, airlines, government and other legitimate bulk mail senders.
The possible fly in the ointment I see is that you wouldn't necessarily have
access to some sorts of transactional emails-- airline flight reminders and
things of that nature. Would that be something where you'd be interested in
getting mail cc:ed to a hamtrap address? For example, I use tagged email
addresses for different airlines, and it would be trivial for me to have my
server relay those messages to a hamtrap address as well as delivering to my
personal email if that sort of thing would be useful.
--
Dave Pooser
Cat-Herder-in-Chief
Pooserville.com