[Asrg] FeedBack loops

[Jose Celestino]

Words by Rich Kulawiec [Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 07:45:22AM -0500]:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 07:48:01PM -0500, Chris Lewis wrote:
> > However, given the volumes that even merely medium sized MTAs see, and
> > at least some possibility of false positives, even if it didn't blow the
> > ARF-recipients off the air, the volume and potential problems would
> > render it useless.
> > 
> > It just don't scale.
> 
> I'm going to concur here, and in addition suggest that this is yet another
> instance of an approach that fails a basic "sniff test" for any email
> abuse technology: does it generate more email?   If the answer is "yes",
> then it's probably a bad idea, because the last thing we need when we're
> drowning in junk SMTP traffic is more.
> 
> Incidentally, I recently concluded an analysis of nearly 5 years worth of
> feedback loop traffic from AOL.  (Which is the first one I started using
> on a site of appreciable volume.)  This analysis, partially automated
> and partially manual, arrived at the following interesting conclusion:
> the FP rate is 100.000%.  Every single feedback loop report identifying
> traffic as spam was wrong.
> 

I have the opposite experience.

> I don't say that to criticize AOL so much as I do the approach - which
> is end-user-driven.  Let's keep in mind (as Marcus Ranum famously pointed
> out) that half of users will click on anything that purports to contain
> naked pictures of semi-famous females.  I don't think this population is
> within a light-year of being qualified to make spam/not-spam decisions.
> (And by the way, I have no reason to think that AOL's user population
> is any better or worse at this than anyone else's.)
> 

No, users tend to fail on their evaluation lots of times. That's why you
should rely on multiple reports from diferent users and work over a
statistical analysis of that. Never on single reports.

-- 
Jose Celestino | http://japc.uncovering.org/files/japc-pgpkey.asc
----------------------------------------------------------------
"One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh." -- Robert A. Heinlein