This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.
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26 Jun 2003
Here’s a freebie idea to anyone that wants it. Most of the spam that sneaks into my inbox past SpamAssassin and my Bayesian spam filter gets there because almost every word in the message is intentionally misspelled. By not giving the filter recognizable content, the messages get past. So how about a spam filter that works by spell check? If more than 50% of the words are misspelled, there’s a good bet that the message is spam or in a language I can’t read anyway.
Unfortunately, I've got a few friends who probably spell over half the words in their emails wrong.
That's what whitelists are for.
I was thinking that, rather than false positives, those would just be quite acceptable collateral damage. Maybe bounce based on a whitelist, to give actual humans a chance to think about the error of their ways...
This is a great idea. To address the issue of friends e-mail getting caught in the filter one could have a slide bar which could set the acceptable number of spelling errors before kicking in out as spam.
This is a great idea. To address the issue of friends e-mail getting caught in the filter one could have a slide bar which could set the acceptable number of spelling errors before kicking it out as spam.
I was searching the net for a program based on this idea when I came across this blog. Unfortunately, much of the misspelling falls far under 50%. They only need to misspell the words that would tend to trigger the filter (such as "Viagra", "discount", etc.). The email that caused me to look for such a program only needed to misspell 3.7 percent of its words in order to fool my installation of spampal and a server level spam filter. This program would need to be able to whitelist my address book so all my spelling challenged friends don't get caught. Another feature that needs to be added is for spam that puts no words in the text and one picture with the spam message. Another solution is to tattoo misspelled words all over convicted spammer's bodies in addition to their prison time. By the way, this post had 7% misspelled words before I spell checked it.
I was looking for this as a solution also and found this blog. I was hoping that someone would have put it into practice by now. I would be satisfied if they would just spell check the subject line, a single typo would be my trigger. And I think if our spelling challenged friends using computers to send email can't find the spell checker they need a different kind of help. Why should we have to accept poor grammar and spelling? I’m tired of being PC in a world where I am under attack from all sides. Besides I've found my spelling has improved since I make it a point to use a checker. I'm not perfect but as Mary Poppins once said: "Practice doesn't make perfect, Perfect practice makes perfect." (BTW: ‘blog’ fails the spell check.)
I've yet to have new idea that someone else hasn't had years, if not centuries, before me ... like this one ... I presently accept mail directly into my inbox from two groups: those in my address book, and previous recipients ... others get either redirected or deleted depending on what tests they pass or failed ... it it were available, spellcheck would be one of these tests
Rather than rejecting on a spellcheck why not run a spellcheck and fix the spelling mistakes automatically before running the message through the SPAM filter ?
This discussion has been closed.
BillSaysThis
June 26, 2003 10:47 AM
Very cool idea! I would love to improve the efficiency of my filter and at the same time deprive these jizzbots of a valuable tool.