Re: Origin and mark

Jon Dennington wrote:

> Talking of security, watch out for mails that have a short text...eg
> "Great collection of naughty pictures".
> 
> When we look at the HTML on these, they have code in white font on
> whitebackground amongst the words eg " Gr  !..84htry87u48u  eat coll 
> 90845hf98 ection of naught  87654 y pictures"

It's an attempt to confuse spam filters that might be looking for 
"naughty pictures", for example.  Doesn't work with the latest Bayesian 
filters, which are well aware of such tricks.  POPFile, for instance:
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/

On topic note: The Reverend Thomas Bayes was an antique (18th century) 
clergyman who came up with a way of classifying things based on how 
much like other things they were.  Known as Bayes' Theorem, it's used 
by clever programmers to identify new spam based on what the individual 
user has previously identified as spam.  Unlike regular filters, 
Bayesian filters learn from experience, and accuracy rates of over 99% 
are common.

http://popfile.sourceforge.net/old.html

-- 
Bill Burns, Long Island, NY, USA
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
History of Technology Websites:
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