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Robert Menschel writes:
> Hello Jon,
> 
> Friday, February 13, 2004, 9:11:41 PM, you wrote:
> 
> J> On Fri, 2004-02-13 at 20:59, Robert Menschel wrote:
> >> I suggest that if we could store a record with three or four fields,
> >> message-id, checksum(subject), checksum(body), and maybe time(firstseen),
> >> we could use this as a database, and apply a rule (maybe named
> >> DUPLICATE_MESSAGEID) where either (1) checksums don't match, or (2)
> >> time(now) is significantly different from time(firstseen).
> >> 
> >> Does this seem like a worthwhile approach?
> 
> J> IANAD (I am not a developer) but I don't think I this a worthwhile
> J> approach for two related reasons:
> 
> J> * it costs us (the mail admins) too much
> J> * it costs spammers too little
> 
> J> We would need to go through the effort of implementing this in code,
> J> then setting off resources (disk and CPU) to checksum and record these
> J> attributes of incoming messages.
> 
> I see this resource requirement as being minimal -- a small fraction of
> what we do currently with Bayes.
> 
> J> In response, spammers would only need to insert a %RND_MSG_ID to
> J> render all our efforts useless.
> 
> It'd be easier to simply have their spam-mail programs generate normal,
> unique message ids...

That's what a real message-ID *is* anyway.  The reason they don't do
it is because we can use those patterns as spam signs.

- --j.
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