On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 06:06, rich...@buzzhost.co.uk <rich...@buzzhost.co.uk> wrote: > On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 05:50 -0700, John Rudd wrote: >> On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 05:42, rich...@buzzhost.co.uk >> <rich...@buzzhost.co.uk> wrote: >> > On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 05:08 -0600, LuKreme wrote: >> >> On 27-Oct-2009, at 04:53, Mike Cardwell wrote: >> >> > Why have any geocities specific rules any more if geocities doesn't >> >> > exist? It's not as if spammers can host their websites on geocities >> >> > anymore so there's no reason why a spammer would include a geocities >> >> > url in their spam. May as well just delete the rules... >> >> >> >> >> >> If the links are still appearing in SPAM then no, don't delete the >> >> rules, just bump up the scores. >> >> >> > >> > Would this not be almost entirely pointless? With spam the motto is >> > 'follow the money'. if the link does not work, there is no path to the >> > money to follow. Other than prospecting for valid recipients {which >> > could be done just as easily without the link} there is no benefit for a >> > spammer to include a link of this nature. >> >> You're assuming that spammers will perfectly update all existing spam. >> There might be crud floating around out there for a while to come. > > I'm not assuming anything John. Spam with no endgame is pointless spam. > All spam has a point and purpose - or it would not exist. Most spammers > staging or springboarding from such places turn their links around > mighty fast - they know they wont be up for long, so whilst I sure there > may be the odd 'floater' around, the enemy is formidable and ahead of > the game. > >> My suggestion: proceed as normal. Adjust the scores for geocities >> spam as the analysis tools on currnet/live* spam suggest, until such >> time as there are no more spam messages showing up that are hitting >> the geocities rules ... for at least 1-3 months. Once they stop >> showing up in the wild for a substantial period of time (ie. my 1-3 >> months suggestion), THEN remove them from the rules. Not before. >> >> (* not the corpus of past/historical/stale spam) > John I agree. I don't think there is any need to rush to do anything. It > would make sense to phase out the rule in a period of time. A few extra > lines of regex is not going to kill most machines - but long term there > will probably be little benefit keeping it in.
I agree -- long term, there should be little to no benefit to keeping it. Just have to figure out what the dividing line between "near term" and "long term" is :-)