I'm just waiting for someone to hook this sort of stuff to some kind of machine learning system, to learn and adapt and come up with new replies. And some 100 years hence we'll be explaining to kids that the singularity arose out of people's annoyance with spammers ;)
Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
131–140 of 188 posts
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#132We need a Chrome extension for this!! I would create it myself .. but there's not any public API.
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#133Have you thought of adding in a check in if they haven't responded after a week?
Perhaps, "Hi there, I thought we were really making progress, but I haven't heard from you for a week. Is there still a chance I could get in on this great opportunity?"
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#134Have you thought of adding in a check in if they haven't responded after a week?
Perhaps, "Hi there, I thought we were really making progress, but I haven't heard from you for a week. Is there still a chance I could get in on this great opportunity?"
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could the work requirement be advertised as part of the destination's MX record or something? I know that in theory you're supposed to be able to send the message to your upstream server and let it worry about how to deliver, but in practice it seems like these days you can count on being able to look up the target's DNS info. Another problem is finding a quantity of work which is high enough to stop spam, but low en…
I can't think of a way to make this work with email, but I do think a proof of work like hashcash would be useful for Web APIs instead of using API keys: - Give a 402 reponse if hashcash isn't included or isn't enough, with a link to a price URL - GETting a price URL may return different values depending on identifying information like IP address, user agent, etc. - Prices can be adjusted based on server load, whethe…
I've done a crappy implementation for my blog to fight spammy comments. It works OK, probably more because it's a totally custom thing that isn't worth time for spammers to fight, rather than because it's actually effective.
The way I did it is:
- When the user focuses in a comment field, the page makes a request to the server asking for initial parameters.
- The server returns the number of leading zeroes required, the number of distinct hashes it needs, and a salt to use. (This is just a constant in my code right now, but could be varied based on client specifics.)
- The page then crunches on the work as the user types their comment. The submit button is disabled until it's complete.
- The proof of work is submitted to the server along with the comment. The server then checks to see if it's good and accepts or rejects. A properly working client should never be rejected (since it fetches the required parameters in advance) so the rejection doesn't have to be too fancy.
- Replays are prevented by storing the salts in a database, and deleting them once they're used for a comment.
I changed the standard hashcash technique a bit by requiring the client to submit multiple distinct hashes. Requiring only one hash works fine, but results in a lot of variance in how long it takes to compute the proof of work. You might tune it for an average of 30 seconds, but a decent percentage of clients will get it in 1 second, or will take 60 seconds. By, for example, requiring 7 fewer leading zeroes but requiring 128 distinct hashes, you get the same average but with a lot less variance. You can also display a semi-accurate progress indicator this way. The downside, of course, is that you have to send more data and the server has to do some extra work to verify.
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello my beloved friend, I hope you and your family are healthy and happy. As I have detailed in my previous correspondence, my offering to you is a way to waste spammers' time by making them reply to emails. I am sure your esteemed self would have great use for such a service. Please wire $1500 to my account for attorney's fees. Thank you and God Bless, Stavros
Hello Stavros, I'm not sure I understand. Could you go into more detail? *In all seriousness though (lol): You could have different types of personalities, depending on the email address of the person who doesn't want the spam. Like someone pretending mnesty.com is their work address but is still treating it like a personal message. That way the spammer will disregard the fact that the reply email isn't the same as t…
It's too hard to write generalities, I'm afraid. You can only write about 10 different sentences before you start to repeat yourself (or at least I can't do it). Feel free to send me sentences for me to add!
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#137I'm just waiting for someone to hook this sort of stuff to some kind of machine learning system, to learn and adapt and come up with new replies. And some 100 years hence we'll be explaining to kids that the singularity arose out of people's annoyance with spammers ;)
That, or the machines will just develop a new language that makes no sense to us and doesn't have a clear meaning.
"Vi4Gra PIllz for cheap caNAda Donald Trump's secret affair."
"Bank statement credit check cashed QUICK FREE!!!"
"You may hav virus. i help fix click here"
"running pharmasy slow now shipping Mexico"
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#138The problem with Spam has always been the minuscule cost of doing it. If the cost can rise above the profit, spam could become unattractive. Imagine if spam attracted a sudden swarm of bots, just as a new email addy attracts spammers now.
The big money in spam is not in selling Viagra, it's in selling spamming.
I'm acquinted with someone who does spamming for a living, mostly in the online casino segment. He does very well, and surprisingly polite company cares more about the money he has, than the way he makes it.
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#139I'm just waiting for someone to hook this sort of stuff to some kind of machine learning system, to learn and adapt and come up with new replies. And some 100 years hence we'll be explaining to kids that the singularity arose out of people's annoyance with spammers ;)
A friend of mine is actually running clustering right now, we want to try and classify the emails into categories automatically when a new one gets forwarded (so we can pick appropriate responses).
Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hello Stavros, I'm not sure I understand. Could you go into more detail? *In all seriousness though (lol): You could have different types of personalities, depending on the email address of the person who doesn't want the spam. Like someone pretending mnesty.com is their work address but is still treating it like a personal message. That way the spammer will disregard the fact that the reply email isn't the same as t…
It's too hard to write generalities, I'm afraid. You can only write about 10 different sentences before you start to repeat yourself (or at least I can't do it). Feel free to send me sentences for me to add!
I'm so sorry, but I think I lost my whole inbox. Could you please send me a recap of our whole conversation?
[sent with the original seed email as body]