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Posted to users@spamassassin.apache.org by Warren Togami <wt...@redhat.com> on 2009/10/05 12:19:56 UTC
Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
I heard an interesting story from a friend who was working in Mexico for
the past few months. Apparently in some Latin American countries,
uppercase legitimate person-to-person e-mail is common because it is
seen as a sign of respect. This apparently is due to historical
telegraph messages being in uppercase.
Perhaps this is the reason why so much spam going into the States is
uppercase despite it being a common sign to Americans of spam.
This might be a caution to us to avoid high scores on uppercase rules?
Our ham corpus likely does not have ordinary South American users to
test it properly.
Warren Togami
wtogami@redhat.com
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by MySQL Student <my...@gmail.com>.
Hi,
> doesnt it appear to everyone else that this has the (slim to none) makings
> of a new urban legend?
I have to admit that when Warren posted this, I went to snopes to
check, and there was nothing there :-)
Regards,
Alex
RE: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by R-Elists <li...@abbacomm.net>.
>
> I grew up in Guadalajara and still have friends there, and in
> 'el De Effe' as well as scattered around a few other places
> in Mexico and I can confirm this is simply not true. No one
> uses all caps as a sign of respect.
>
> I can't speak to other Latin American countries. Perhaps this
> is true in Guatemala, or Nicaragua? I doubt it though.
>
hmmmmm
doesnt it appear to everyone else that this has the (slim to none) makings
of a new urban legend?
i mean, if all caps was a sign of respect on that continent, then wouldnt
all of the advertising be in all caps "out of respect"
a few days ago when this was posted it was almost believable, for like 3
seconds of pondering.
- rh
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by LuKreme <kr...@kreme.com>.
On 5-Oct-2009, at 12:53, René Berber wrote:
> Warren Togami wrote:
>> On 10/05/2009 02:30 PM, René Berber wrote:
>>> Warren Togami wrote:
>>>
>>>> I heard an interesting story from a friend who was working in
>>>> Mexico for
>>>> the past few months. Apparently in some Latin American countries,
>>>> uppercase legitimate person-to-person e-mail is common because it
>>>> is
>>>> seen as a sign of respect. This apparently is due to historical
>>>> telegraph messages being in uppercase.
>>>
>>> Not true.
>>
>> Could you provide some context? Where are you from? What kind of
>> industry or people are you exposed to?
>
> I am Mexican, living in México City.
I grew up in Guadalajara and still have friends there, and in 'el De
Effe' as well as scattered around a few other places in Mexico and I
can confirm this is simply not true. No one uses all caps as a sign of
respect.
I can't speak to other Latin American countries. Perhaps this is true
in Guatemala, or Nicaragua? I doubt it though.
--
Everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it's all such
laugh. Yeah, and the chip stains and grease will come out in the
bath. You will never understand how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control, and with nowhere left to go. You
are amazed that the exist, and they burn so bright whilst you
can only wonder why.
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by Yet Another Ninja <sa...@alexb.ch>.
On 10/6/2009 2:33 AM, Warren Togami wrote:
> Please excuse me, I used faulty logic.
>
> I wasn't asking you anything further. I meant I asked this "friend" for
> more details and it seems to be non-technical users is the most likely
> type of people to type legitimate mail in all caps.
>
> Warren
so what score is being added to this uppercase stuff?
score UPPERCASE_50_75 0.001 0.490 0.001 0.001
score UPPERCASE_75_100 2.402 1.930 1.127 1.528
reminder: SA scores and one rule, per default won't tag something as
spam.....
where's the problem? what's the worry?
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by Warren Togami <wt...@redhat.com>.
Please excuse me, I used faulty logic.
I wasn't asking you anything further. I meant I asked this "friend" for
more details and it seems to be non-technical users is the most likely
type of people to type legitimate mail in all caps.
Warren
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by René Berber <r....@computer.org>.
Warren Togami wrote:
> OK... asking again, it seems more likely the commonality in people who
> write mail in all caps is being extremely untechnical, barely able to
> type, or working for the government.
And your question is...?
Sounds like the part of your friend's comment that talks about the
telegraph, 99% of people in Mexico do not use the telegraph, its even
difficult to find the telegraph offices since a long time ago. So yes,
perhaps your "friend" was talking about some out of the way, far from
the cities, place; and about people that don't use email much, and I
wouldn't expect them to spam (if they exist).
What has all this to do with spam?
About 1% of spam on my servers comes from México, nowhere near the big
guns, and most of that is from spam-bots. Of course your title says
Latin America, the big guns in Latin America are Brasil and Argentina,
so why are we wasting time on this?
--
René Berber
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by Warren Togami <wt...@redhat.com>.
OK... asking again, it seems more likely the commonality in people who
write mail in all caps is being extremely untechnical, barely able to
type, or working for the government.
Warren
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by René Berber <r....@computer.org>.
Warren Togami wrote:
> On 10/05/2009 02:30 PM, René Berber wrote:
>> Warren Togami wrote:
>>
>>> I heard an interesting story from a friend who was working in Mexico for
>>> the past few months. Apparently in some Latin American countries,
>>> uppercase legitimate person-to-person e-mail is common because it is
>>> seen as a sign of respect. This apparently is due to historical
>>> telegraph messages being in uppercase.
>>
>> Not true.
>
> Could you provide some context? Where are you from? What kind of
> industry or people are you exposed to?
I am Mexican, living in México City.
What your "friend" stated is not true, I've never seen uppercase use in
any normal situation, just lazy people sometimes go all uppercase, and
the usual "yelling".
Does it matter "what kind of people..."? Grated I haven't seen all the
mail moving around the country, not even a statistically representative
sample, but the important point is what I haven't seen: uppercase used
as a sign of respect. Even assuming your "friend" statement as valid,
is just one point, its not meaningful...
[snip]
--
René Berber
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by Warren Togami <wt...@redhat.com>.
On 10/05/2009 02:30 PM, René Berber wrote:
> Warren Togami wrote:
>
>> I heard an interesting story from a friend who was working in Mexico for
>> the past few months. Apparently in some Latin American countries,
>> uppercase legitimate person-to-person e-mail is common because it is
>> seen as a sign of respect. This apparently is due to historical
>> telegraph messages being in uppercase.
>
> Not true.
Could you provide some context? Where are you from? What kind of
industry or people are you exposed to?
In any case it seems that our nightly masscheck ham is missing mail from
Latin American users.
Warren Togami
wtogami@redhat.com
Re: Uppercase E-mail in Latin America
Posted by René Berber <r....@computer.org>.
Warren Togami wrote:
> I heard an interesting story from a friend who was working in Mexico for
> the past few months. Apparently in some Latin American countries,
> uppercase legitimate person-to-person e-mail is common because it is
> seen as a sign of respect. This apparently is due to historical
> telegraph messages being in uppercase.
Not true.
[snip]
--
René Berber