A Study On Solutions To Spam Erik Neff December 3, 2003
Problem: Too many junk mails A hassle for email recipients Fills up inboxes Costs ISPs to deliver Creates reason to hack into mail servers Projected number of spam messages, per person per year. - Jupiter Media Matrix
Thesis “I hypothesize that the best solution will be a rule-based solution that is individually configurable by the e-mail subscriber. The reason being that the user will maintain complete responsibility at a minimal effort and can modify the solution’s functionality to tailor its capabilities to individual needs. “
Methodology Examine spam solutions: Subjectively Compare US Federal/State Anti-spam laws Client Mail Filters (SpamAssassin) Server/Gateway Filters (Sophos) Bayesian Filters Charging for emails Protocol Change (TRIPOLI) Subjectively Compare
Analysis Criteria Dollar costs Ease of Deployment & Scalability Effectiveness Ability to Enforce False positives Network traffic Manual intervention required User friendliness
References http://spam.abuse.net/userhelp/ http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/nospam.html http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html http://www.sophos.com/products/pm/ http://au2.spamassassin.org/index.html http://www.pfir.org/tripoli-announce http://www.inboxlock.com/spam.html http://www.spamlaws.com/