"Karsten M. Self" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > on Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 02:29:54PM -0500, Lloyd Zusman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: >> >> [ ... ] >> >> I use a similar approach, and I find it equally useful. >> >> Many people make the argument that challenge-response paradigms generate >> too much traffic, and quite a few of these people use this argument to >> outright reject any and all use of challenge-response. >> >> Few of these outright detractors seem to want to consider the fact that >> a hybrid approach similar to what we use not only addresses this >> problem, but also effectively prevents that last little bit of spam from >> sneaking through. > > Few of those criticising these "outright detractors" appear to > understand that the recipient of a challenge has no a priori basis for > determining what, if any, additional filters stand between your C/R > system and the Net. > > > I'd recommend taking a look at Brad Templeton's (very recently revised) > Best Practices page: > > http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/challengeresponse.html > > Given his guidelines, I can assure you I will never receive a valid > challenge.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it turns out that my own hybrid solution seems to follow all of Brad Templeton's guidelines. They're all common sense. I don't recall the last time that I received a valid challenge for an email that I have sent out. It seems like I get one every few months, at most. In an average week, I receive thousands of spams for the set of 3 email addresses that I commonly use. My system only needs to challenge around 20-25 of them during this time period for all three addresses. I can probably lower this even more by spending a little more time on the heuristic filters (the challenge happens last, if all else fails to determine ham/spam). Also, messages that were challenged and not answered are automatically fed into my heuristics, to make similar messages less likely to get through in the future. This seems to be having a slow, positive effect in the long run. > Peace. -- Lloyd Zusman [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ tmda-users mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://tmda.net/lists/listinfo/tmda-users
