[CAnet-NEWS@canarie.ca: [news] A clever idea for fighting SPAM]

[Julian Field]

At 20:53 19/09/2003, you wrote:
>Hmmm..... giver spammer IQ's this has a chance :)

Unfortunately many spammers require a response by phone and aren't
interested in engaging in conversation with anyone. Very nice idea though
and may well waste their time, which has to be a good thing (he says,
accepting the fact that even more spammers and virus writers will start
targeting him than before :-)

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>[Andrew Odlyzko at the University of Minnesota Digital technology Center
>http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/
>recently came up with a clever idea for fighting spam which I am forwarding
>here with his permission.  His idea "is to raise the cost to spammers by
>wasting their time.  This has been suggested many times", but the (possibly)
>novel twist Andrew has proposed "is to minimize the cost to the good guys
>and advance science at the same time. The proposal is to have an annual
>contest for the best AI program, as measured by how deeply it could keep
>spammers engaged in correspondence with the program."
>
>This would a good practical use of the Turing test and could greatly
>entertain numerous AI grad students.  As Andrew points out "there are all
>sorts of little details that one can go into, such as extracting the right
>email address from correspondence, what to do if the spammers asks victims
>to call on the phone, etc.,but those can be left to the reader's
>imagination."
>
>This idea may not eliminate spam, but it sure would provide a sense of
>retribution to have these spammers wasting endless hours in fruitless
>correspondence with an AI machine.  -- BSA]
>
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Julian Field
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