Re: [linux-audio-user] OT Spam (was Re: public apology and withdrawal)

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 at 21:48 -0500, Jon B wrote:
> rude?? really? why?
>
> after years of having to sift through spam all the time and losing
> real mails in the spam folders, i'm paranoid about releasing my real
> address onto the web in any form. so far i think i've only received
> the brute force type mails to my real address, where they just guess
> your address, and, of course, the few that get sent to my disposable
> addresses.
>
> 20 per day!?? eek! sounds like a huge pain to me.
>
> i've received exactly 10 spams since feb 28th (today is march 29th),
> all of which are to disposable addresses (from mailing lists like this
> one) and i can delete the address if someone big decides to put one on
> their list and send me tons of internet pharmaceutical mailings. i
> think it's a nice way to operate.

I used to be careful and care about where my email address went and
worry about spam. Then I realized that gee whiz I'm spending more effort
trying to avoid spam then I would be just dealing with it. I discovered
Paul Graham's "A Plan for Spam" essay and ESR's wonderful bogofilter
program. I have flung my email address around shamelessly for over two
years now, and I currently have only one or two "unsure" messages that
are really spam to deal with per day. The rest go to a spam file that I
mostly ignore but go dig in when I don't get that email from ebay that
I'm expecting (and of course I periodically purge it). Except for ebay
emails, most of which have a low SNR anyway, I very rarely get any false
positives. Even some legit ebay messages make it through - bogofilter
knows something I don't about telling the difference (or it has secretly
been observing my ebay auctions). Bayesian analysis is a pretty naive
and simplistic approach to email filtering, and yet it works amazingly
well. I choose to let my computer do the hard work in dealing with spam.

Not to say you're wrong in any way, but only to point out what I do.

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