Fergie's Tech Blog

Teamwork will beat the spammers

Mark Buchanon writes in New Scientist:

MORE than two-thirds of all email traffic is spam. But the problem could be reduced if our computers work together to control it.

Today's anti-spam software-filters block messages that have content such as advertising slogans or sexually explicit words that is similar to that of spam emails already received and identified. Therefore, they cannot pick up new spam messages that are unlike any received before.

But anti-spam programs would be vastly more powerful if they could pool information about spam, much as police in different places share tips on known criminals. So says computer scientist Vwani Roychowdhury of the University of California, Los Angeles, who together with Oscar Boykin of the University of Florida and other colleagues has now proposed a practical way of doing it.

posted by Fergie @ 5/12/2005 12:00:00 PM