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Terry Zink's Anti-spam Blog

Protecting your mail from the scum of the internet

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ZDNet: 1.5m spam emails sent from compromised University accounts
Box of Meat antispam blog has a link to an article on ZDNet: 1.5m spam emails sent from compromised University accounts .  Some excerpts: “Hackers gained access to the University of Otago staff email server recently and used it to send out Read More...
Update on CNN spam
A quick update on CNN spam, they have morphed their subject lines and are now breaking news alerts for MSNBC.  I haven't seen any personally (nor did I receive a phone call at 3 am alerting me to this) but others on our spam team have.  Apparently, Read More...
A bit more on the spam chief interview
Following on from my previous post on the interview with the spam chief at Yahoo, I thought I'd respond to a couple more things that Mark Risher said. bartonas: What is the effect, if any, other than putting it back in my in-box, of me selecting "not Read More...
Quickly morphing CNN spam
The spam outbreak "from" CNN the occurred this past week has morphed into a new breed: It appears that the spammers have learned from previous mistakes because this one is a little slicker. In the body contents, just like the old one it contains Read More...
Interview with Yahoo spam chief
A few days ago, Yahoo antispam chief Mark Risher hosted a Q&A session with various users and answered their questions, both pre-submitted and live questions.  I thought I'd chime in and take some selected quotes from the session and add my own Read More...
CNN spam
I've been seeing some CNN spam the past few days, that is, spam in the form of breaking news stories from CNN.com.  Below is a sample: These all look like legitimate news stories, and indeed, they probably are taken straight from an actual CNN news Read More...
Best looking phish I've seen in a long time
A month ago one of our spam analysts came across a Bank of America phishing spam.  The thing about this one is that it is one of the best I've seen in a long time: This is very legitimate-looking.  The logo is legitimate, it has correct grammar Read More...
My paper on spam metrics, part 3
Continuing on in my series of rebuttals to the reviewers of my paper, I'd like to respond to the third and final review. I agree with the author that a set of common metrics is paramount for being able to measure and compare current approaches, and use Read More...
My paper on spam metrics, part 2
Continuing on in my rebuttals to the reviewers who refused my paper (which I believe is my right... if they can review it and refuse then I can disagree with their reasons for refusal), I'd like to move on to the second reviewer. The definitions given Read More...
My paper on spam metrics, part 1
I just finished a series on spam metrics and I submitted to the CEAS in order to get it accepted such that I could speak at the conference this year. I put it together in two days.  Well, as it turns out, it was rejected. The reviews on it were anonymous, Read More...
A Common Set of Metrics, part 5
6. Grey Mail For all of our discussions around spam and non-spam, there is still the issue of grey mail. What is grey mail? Do we include grey mail in our spam corpus? Should we include it in the non-spam corpus or omit it altogether? To begin with, let’s Read More...
A Common Set of Metrics, part 4
4. Combining FPs and FNs Suppose we were evaluating two filters, Filter A and Filter B. Filter A has a catch rate of 91% but an FP rate of 5%. Filter B has a catch rate of 75% but an FP rate of 2%. Which is better? How can we combine the two metrics? Read More...
A Common Set of Antispam Metrics, part 3
3. Measurements The first way to do this is by way of Catch Rate. Catch rate is defined by the following: Catch rate = = Spam correctly identified / (Spam correctly identified+missed spam) = TP / (TP+FN) This Catch rate gives us the effectiveness of a Read More...
A Common Set of Antispam Metrics, part 2
2. Definitions The email industry needs to converge on a set of standards around metrics. Specifically, while we all think we know what we mean, what we don’t know is what others think they mean. So, let’s define them: Legitimate mail (ham) Read More...
A Common Set of Antispam Metrics, Part 1
A few weeks ago I submitted a paper to the CEAS (Conference on Email and Antispam).  My paper was rejected but I thought I would reprint it here. I ended up writing this paper in two days.  I either had to write a 10-page paper or a 3-page one.  Read More...
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