Sarel, a Pragmatic Programmer » Ideas http://blog.botha.us/sarel Thu, 14 Jan 2021 12:46:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.38 Fighting Spam http://blog.botha.us/sarel/fighting-spam/ http://blog.botha.us/sarel/fighting-spam/#comments Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:28:51 +0000 http://blog.botha.us/sarel/?p=13 I’m noticing some spam messages these days that contain at the top the ad of what they’re trying to sell to you. Then the rest of the message is a copy and paste of some legit content, sometimes very technical. I have an idea that may help in coping with these.
Most emails out there are are of one of two forms:
1. They cover a lot of different themes but at a very high level.
2. They cover a specific theme and use some low-level terms.

Basically, you wouldn’t find the terms colonoscopy and TCP in the same email and if you do then something is probably up.

What if you build a dictionary of words found in e-mails, then assign both a level to the word and a theme. The level would be 1 for high level terms such as ‘doctor’ or ‘computers’ and 2 for lower level terms. Some themes could be medical, and computers. If you find level 1 words from different themes in an email that’s ok. However, if you find level 2 words from different themes in the same email then something is probably up.

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