False positives (was Re: [Asrg] Re: RMX Records)

["David F. Skoll" <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Alan DeKok wrote:

>   If my ISP is under serious attack from spammers, then some level of
> "good" mail will probably be thrown out with the spam.  The only way I
> know of to guarantee that no "good" mail is thrown out, is to not
> throw out *any* mail.

Or to have a human sort it out.

>   We have to decide what level of spam we can live with, and what
> level of false positives we can live with in anti-spam filters.  If
> lowering the false positive rate by 2% increases the amount of spam by
> 10x, then that solution doesn't scale.

Yes, but the "we" in "we have to decide" should be we, the end users,
not some ISP.

Automatic filters will get you so far, maybe up to 90-98% accuracy,
depending on which filter you use and what your mail mix looks like.
But they do run out of gas, and if you can't accept false positives,
then the only solution is human sorting.  You just have to figure out
(1) how to do the human sorting as cheaply as possible, and (2) how
much you're willing to pay for human sorting.  That determines the
filter settings you use.

--
David.
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