Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button idea is pre-failed

[Martijn Grooten <[e-mail]>]

> 2. User time
>
>       Let's assume that #1 is completely wrong: let's assume that
>       most/all users are competent spam/non-spam classifying engines.
>       Let's further assume that they're so proficient at it that they
>       can do so in 5 seconds per message.
>
>       Based on both these incredibly over-optimistic assumptions, we can
>       then calculate how much end-user time will be spent performing
>       this classification task and hitting the button.  6.3 million
>       decisions/pushes equates to about a man-year, which means that even
>       a single small spam run (say 300 million attempts, 3% delivery rate,
>       thus 9 million deliveries) can easily chew up well over a man-year
>       of time.  Do the math.
>
>       Part of the reason we try to stop spam/spammers is to prevent
>       them from using up end-user time.  We should not be tasking
>       users with this, as it neatly undercuts part of what we're
>       trying to do.

I don't think your numbers are very realistic (neither the 3% delivery rate for large campaigns, nor the 100% of users that will click the TIS button), but more importantly, how is this supposed to take longer than the alternative for unwanted messages of any kind: clicking the Delete/Trash button? In GMail, for instance, both buttons are right next to each other.

I think the only conclusion one can draw from the above is that reporting a message as spam shouldn't be more difficult that deleting a message. But then, if it were more difficult, most people simply wouldn't use that button.

Martijn.

PS unrelated to the above, but to save myself from thinking whether it's worth sending a reminder at all: CFP for VB2010 (conference on (anti-) malware/spam, 29 Sep-1 Oct, Vancouver) closes this coming Friday. http://www.virusbtn.com/conference/vb2010/call/index

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