[SC-Help] Re: Spammers getting smarter?

[Geoff Lane]

"Mike Easter" <MikeE at ster.invalid> wrote in
news:cubdlc$4i3$1 at news.spamcop.net: 

> I don't know how you have /your/ spampal configured, but I haven't had
> a SP false positive yet.  Perhaps I will one of these days, but
> 'during' or with the parse I am examining every element of what is
> before me, which includes the spampal X-lines about why it called the
> item spam. If it isn't a classic or typical spam, it's body can be
> viewed in the parser.  My original premise is that it is rare that my
> tagged spam needs to be opened.  I can't remember when that last
> happened. 

FWIW, I get at least ten Spampal false positives a week. Over half of 
those are from mailing lists to which I subscribe. Most of the remainder
fall foul of the Bayesian plugin. I've even had mail from family trapped
by Spampal! 

Now, I'm not suggesting that you should open spam in one of Microsoft's
MUAs. I'm just saying that you should make sure that something actually
is spam before reporting it. If you can do that by viewing the raw text
then fine. 

However, yesterday I found a message in my spam bin where looking at the
raw text didn't work. The body of the message was one line, "Here's
someone you might like to see!" accompanied by an inline image. I was
almost sure it was spam and was about to delete it but the sender's
e-mail address rang a bell. I transferred it to my MUA (which isn't
susceptible to the same ills as the MS offerings) and took a peek. It
was from my niece and the interesting someone was her new-born son! 

> Just because a bad reporter made a bad report doesn't prove that one
> style of spam reporting is superior to another and it doesn't mean
> that people should be opening known spam.
---
I'm not convinced that you can be sure a message is spam without opening
it. By "opening" I mean inspecting the contents. For plain text, you can 
get away with looking at the raw text - but you I don't think that you 
can do that with a message that contains just an image. If you don't 
want to open it and you are not *100% certain* that the message is spam, 
then delete it by all means but *do not report it*. Spamcop's rules 
state that you must only use SC to report spam, from which I infer that 
you must not report anything that you're not 100% sure is spam. To do so 
runs the risk of causing collateral damage. 

BTW, I'm not saying anything about known spam, that is messages you are
100% positive are spam. I'm just saying that you should have the decency
to verify that a message you suspect to be spam actually is spam before
you report it. 

-- 
Geoff Lane
Cornwall, UK