On Thu, 28 Jul 2022 at 13:17, Paul Gilmartin <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, 28 Jul 2022 12:49:45 -0400, Tony Harminc wrote: > >> > >> What does NOTSP mean? The Goo Gal does not seem to know. > > > >It's been used for years when submitting an item to the RISKS list. It > >stands for "NOT SPam", and is just a quick first level aid to the > >moderator in filtering out junk emails. > > > And that works because no spammer is clever enough to supply the NOTSP, right?
No - as I said, it's a quick first level aid. Rejecting any mail that doesn't contain NOTSP in the subject line gets rid of essentially all non-targeted spam. I'm sure there are spammers clever enough to stick it in, and they have to be filtered out using content based methods. The moderator has said for years that he may change the magic string, but he doesn't seem to have had to, which suggests that it's reasonably effective. This somehow reminds me of https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/ It's not quite analogous, but has the same flavour. Tony H. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
