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Title: Analyzing spam for cash - does anyone have a need for this? Post by: OnkelPaul on May 09, 2013, 02:11:52 PM I've been thinking about the things I do well and how I could offer them for BTC - I'm a programmer but will likely not be able to work through serious projects as I am employed full-time.
However, I have extensive experience in mail system administration and spam fighting, so one possibility might be to help people understand where their spam is coming from, what patterns there are to it, and what they can do against it. I am not sure how this would be done - one option would be to build a web site where users could upload their spam to be analyzed mostly using heuristics (automatic, fast, cheap) but have the option of getting a more in-depth analysis by a human (that's me) for a little more. However, I have no idea how much such a service should cost. I'd probably start with 0.01-0.02 BTC for a personal analysis involving 5-15 minutes of web search, whois lookups, comparison with my own database etc. and 0.0001-0.001 BTC for an automated analysis (which I don't yet have programmed, but that would be done when I think there is a market). This service would not try to compete with typical spam-filtering services but would work on single spam samples. Do you think anybody would find this useful? Or do folks just accept that spam is getting into their mailboxes and that spamfilters can only do a moderately good job at eliminating it? Onkel Paul Title: Re: Analyzing spam for cash - does anyone have a need for this? Post by: vanhal on May 09, 2013, 02:14:47 PM I did a thesis on attaching a tiny fraction of a cent to each email to cut down on spam.
Normal people who would send and receive about the same amount of emails would probably end up with a bit of money. While spammers would end up having to pay a load to send the spam. Wrote it before bitcoin, but I think that would be a great way of implementing it. Title: Re: Analyzing spam for cash - does anyone have a need for this? Post by: OnkelPaul on May 09, 2013, 02:22:09 PM Yeah, this has been proposed a number of times. One problem with it is that most spam is sent via hacked PCs or hacked mail accounts, so the "fee" would have to be paid by the hack victims. Of course, that would teach them to better secure their account or system, which would not be bad at all...
The other problem is that it's difficult to ensure that every message has an attached fee. Who will receive the fee? Maybe let the recipient collect the fee, so if he is being spammed, he gets at least some money in compensation... But that would require a completely different mail system, one that would exclude a huge number of users. I don't think I'd want that. Onkel Paul Title: Re: Analyzing spam for cash - does anyone have a need for this? Post by: vanhal on May 09, 2013, 02:24:12 PM Yeah,
some of the reasons we never went any further then just being a thesis. |