Amedee Van Gasse wrote on Friday, October 27, 2006 6:08 AM -0500: > This only means spammers are getting "smarter" - or more likely: all > kinds of spam filtering serve as darwinian pressure on the evolution > of spam.
A very apt comparison. The behavior of this system we have all been monitoring has much in common with biological systems. Both spam and filters are adaptive, self-organizing systems. They both are resource constrained, so the "smartest" solutions tend to win. The dynamics of the process are also typical of those in biological systems. I suggest that the most apt analogies are to pathogens and parasites, and not just because they are nasty! These organisms have very simple genomes, so there are severe constraints on the possible solutions. They make up for this with a short generation time and an unusually "labile" genome that produces large numbers of new combinations to test. This is in direct contrast to complex organisms that could be easily wiped out by an overly labile genome. When a new genetic combination appears that provides a selection advantage in a particular niche, its population surges. By decimating their target population and providing strong selection pressure for those hosts (spam filters) with even marginal resistance, pathogenic pandemics tend to be self-limiting. This is likely what will occur with the current pandemic of image spam. Either filters will catch up, or MUA's will block remote images entirely, and eventually images embedded in the message. In the long run, blocking images is more sensible than trying to decode them. We already have captcha's to make this difficult, and there is little need to fight this battle in the first place. The justification for images in messages is largely for the benefit of advertisers. I hate to admit that Mr. Bill was right when he proposed, over a decade ago, that the commercial internet will be financed by advertising. While correct for the time being, this doesn't mean that email messages themselves must carry it. -- Seth Goodman _______________________________________________ [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/spambayes Check the FAQ before asking: http://spambayes.sf.net/faq.html
