Hi again,
it’s me Katrina from Ecstasea Yacht Charter. Just wanted to say thanks for pre-registering
with us and we wanted to let you know that we are now up and running! I can’t
wait to see you on deck with me and my girlfriends! In case you don’t remember
how to reach me, you can go to the website below to make discreet reservations…
We’ll have a great time!
xoxo- Katrina
Is it me, or is spam getting really hard to catch these days?
This spam email has almost nothing “spammy” about it. The only SA rule that this
hit was BAYES (which shows how powerful Bayes is). I just added rules for the
words “fantasy” and “register”, but I have to give them low scores because they
might occur in legitimate mail.
Sigh.
Daniel.
On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 04:37:56PM +0900, Katrina wrote:
Hi again,
it’s me Katrina from Ecstasea Yacht Charter. Just wanted to say thanks for
pre-registering
with us and we wanted to let you know that we are now up and running! I can’t
wait to see you on deck with me and my girlfriends! In case you don’t remember
how to reach me, you can go to the website below to make discreet reservations…We’ll have a great time!
xoxo- Katrina
–
Daniel Carrera | PGP: 6643 8C8B 3522 66CB D16C D779 2FDD 7DAC 9AF7 7A88
Math PhD. UMD | http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/pgp.html
Yes; because more people are using spam filters, the spammers are adapting
their messages to bypass them. This is an arms race which I have not bought
into.
And now, just to trigger your spam filter, I am going to write:
int main(void)
{
register int fantasy;
}
Regards,
Brian.
On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 04:54:56PM +0900, Daniel Carrera wrote:
Is it me, or is spam getting really hard to catch these days?
Is it me, or is spam getting really hard to catch these days?
This spam email has almost nothing “spammy” about it. The only SA rule
that
this hit was BAYES (which shows how powerful Bayes is). I just added
rules
for the > words “fantasy” and “register”, but I have to give them low
scores
because they might occur in legitimate mail.
My fantasy is that 200 more people will register for the
Ruby Conference in Austin in November.
Hal
----- Original Message -----
From: “Daniel Carrera” dcarrera@math.umd.edu
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 2:54 AM
Subject: Re: Take a Fantasy Cruise with Me!
–
Hal Fulton
hal9000@hypermetrics.com
Sigh.
Daniel.On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 04:37:56PM +0900, Katrina wrote:
Hi again,
it’s me Katrina from Ecstasea Yacht Charter. Just wanted to say thanks
for
pre-registering
with us and we wanted to let you know that we are now up and running! I
can’t
wait to see you on deck with me and my girlfriends! In case you don’t
remember
how to reach me, you can go to the website below to make discreet
reservations…We’ll have a great time!
xoxo- Katrina
–
Daniel Carrera | PGP: 6643 8C8B 3522 66CB D16C D779 2FDD 7DAC 9AF7 7A88
Math PhD. UMD | http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/pgp.html
- Weekly Smile * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign in a hotel in Athens:
Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours
of 9 and 11 A.M. daily.
Daniel Carrera wrote:
Is it me, or is spam getting really hard to catch these days?
“with.*my girlfriends”
“make.*reservation”
“thanks for.*regist”
are all pretty suspicious…
Actually your mail got a very strong ham score.
Your score was -107.8, whereas the required score for spam is +5.0
A good filter can be really good at identifying ham. It considers a lot of things
like the fact that you are ussing mutt, and the fact that you quoted my message.
Of course, Bayes helped.
I have only one experience of ham being identified as spam. It was someone who
wrote: “I just got this spam and I don’t know why. Here it is: …”
Cheers,
On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 05:29:32PM +0900, Brian Candler wrote:
And now, just to trigger your spam filter, I am going to write:
int main(void)
{
register int fantasy;
}Regards,
–
Daniel Carrera | PGP: 6643 8C8B 3522 66CB D16C D779 2FDD 7DAC 9AF7 7A88
Math PhD. UMD | http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/pgp.html
From: “Daniel Carrera” dcarrera@math.umd.edu
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 2:54 AM
Subject: Re: Take a Fantasy Cruise with Me!Is it me, or is spam getting really hard to catch these days?
This spam email has almost nothing “spammy” about it. The only SA rule
that
this hit was BAYES (which shows how powerful Bayes is). I just added
rules
for the > words “fantasy” and “register”, but I have to give them low
scores
because they might occur in legitimate mail.My fantasy is that 200 more people will register for the
Ruby Conference in Austin in November.
Nah, keep with the theme–hope that GeekCruises puts on a Ruby Romp
to go with the Perl Whirl, Mac Mania, Java Junket and all the other
“excuse to get my company to pay for me to take a cruise” cruises
At 1:10 AM +0900 8/5/03, Hal E. Fulton wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Sigh.
Daniel.On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 04:37:56PM +0900, Katrina wrote:
Hi again,
it’s me Katrina from Ecstasea Yacht Charter. Just wanted to say thanks
for
pre-registering
with us and we wanted to let you know that we are now up and running! I
can’t
wait to see you on deck with me and my girlfriends! In case you don’t
remember
how to reach me, you can go to the website below to make discreet
reservations…We’ll have a great time!
xoxo- Katrina
–
Daniel Carrera | PGP: 6643 8C8B 3522 66CB D16C D779 2FDD 7DAC 9AF7 7A88
Math PhD. UMD | http://www.math.umd.edu/~dcarrera/pgp.html
- Weekly Smile * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign in a hotel in Athens:
Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours
of 9 and 11 A.M. daily.
–
Dan
--------------------------------------“it’s like this”-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
dan@sidhe.org have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
On this list I can easily imagine seeing:
Ruby Conference 2003 is rapidly approaching. If you’d like to make a
reservation, talk to me, if you’ve already registered, thanks for your
registration.
The rules in Spam Assasin are pretty good though. They nail most of the
nigerian scams, etc. that I see. Mostly they seem to do it based on
malformed / forged headers too, something that is much more clearly a marking
of a spam system, but harder for people to spot.
It’s just that it’s always so hard to eliminate the false positives.
Oh well, the good news is that there finally is a real-world purpose to good
AI programs.
Ben
On Mon August 4 2003 10:18 pm, Clifford Heath wrote:
“make.*reservation”
“thanks for.*regist”
Both work exceedingly well, even with “clever spammer tricks”.
— Clifford Heath cjh_nospam@managesoft.com wrote:
Daniel Carrera wrote:
Is it me, or is spam getting really hard to catch these days?
“with.*my girlfriends”
“make.*reservation”
“thanks for.*regist”are all pretty suspicious…
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
For those who are interested, I’ve put this exchange through spambayes
and spamassassin for comparison purposes. Spambayes produced zero
false positives, putting the questionable messages into “unsure”.
On Monday, August 4, 2003, at 07:40 PM, Ben Giddings wrote:
On Mon August 4 2003 10:18 pm, Clifford Heath wrote:
“make.*reservation”
“thanks for.*regist”On this list I can easily imagine seeing:
Ruby Conference 2003 is rapidly approaching. If you’d like to make a
reservation, talk to me, if you’ve already registered, thanks for
your
registration.The rules in Spam Assasin are pretty good though. They nail most of
the
nigerian scams, etc. that I see. Mostly they seem to do it based on
malformed / forged headers too, something that is much more clearly a
marking
of a spam system, but harder for people to spot.It’s just that it’s always so hard to eliminate the false positives.
Oh well, the good news is that there finally is a real-world purpose
to good
AI programs.Ben
In article 200308042240.22031.ben@thingmagic.com,
Ben Giddings ben@thingmagic.com wrote:
On Mon August 4 2003 10:18 pm, Clifford Heath wrote:
“make.*reservation”
“thanks for.*regist”On this list I can easily imagine seeing:
Ruby Conference 2003 is rapidly approaching. If you’d like to make a
reservation, talk to me, if you’ve already registered, thanks for your
registration.
Yeah, but I notice that you couldn’t imagine seeing the word ‘girlfriend’
show up in a message to this list 
Phil
Aha! It just did. And besides, the regular expression wasn’t just
“girlfriend” (which might show up) but “with.*my girlfriends”.
Plural, and written by someone on this list?? Not very likely…
unfortunately.
Ben
On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 12:38 AM, Phil Tomson wrote:
In article 200308042240.22031.ben@thingmagic.com,
Ben Giddings ben@thingmagic.com wrote:On Mon August 4 2003 10:18 pm, Clifford Heath wrote:
“make.*reservation”
“thanks for.*regist”On this list I can easily imagine seeing:
Ruby Conference 2003 is rapidly approaching. If you’d like to make a
reservation, talk to me, if you’ve already registered, thanks for
your
registration.Yeah, but I notice that you couldn’t imagine seeing the word
‘girlfriend’
show up in a message to this list
“I’d like to make a reservation for the Ruby Conference this year,
but with my girlfriends schedule, I don’t think I’ll be able to
attend. Nonetheless, _thanks for inviting me; here’s hoping
regist_ration is up again this year!”
Never underestimate the power of a .* combined with someone with poor
punctuation. =:)
On Monday, Aug 4, 2003, at 22:44 America/Denver, Ben Giddings wrote:
On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 12:38 AM, Phil Tomson wrote:
Yeah, but I notice that you couldn’t imagine seeing the word
‘girlfriend’
show up in a message to this listAha! It just did. And besides, the regular expression wasn’t just
“girlfriend” (which might show up) but “with.*my girlfriends”.
Plural, and written by someone on this list?? Not very likely…
unfortunately.
–
Michael Granger ged@FaerieMUD.org
Rubymage, Believer, Architect
The FaerieMUD Consortium http://www.FaerieMUD.org/