SPAM, that thing we have all come to know and love (the unsolicited email kind, not the unidentifiable fleshy pink shit). I stumbled across an interesting idea (well technically a professor pointed it out in class, but I have the original article in front of me now) written by Paul Graham (one of the early proponents of Bayesian email filters) describing a potential new type of filter. Instead of just moving SPAM into a junk mail filter he proposes using a more active approach. Your email client once it determined the email was a piece of SPAM would send out requests to the addresses of websites contained in the email.
The rationale behind doing this is to essentially have a denial-of-service attack by simulating interest in a product. The websites wouldn’t actually be displayed on the computer, but would be downloaded then promptly deleted. He believes that this will place an additional financial burden on the people sending bulk email because they have to pay for their upstream connection, and all of the false requests for website access would cost them a fortune.
Me thinks that once there is an actual copy of this filter working I would switch over to it instantly :-)
If you want to read his origional article the link is below (the 2nd one being some of his other information)
Filters That Fight Back"
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