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Blacklist Patrol
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How effective are Blacklists? (specifically the CBL)
Anyone who reads this site knows the routine now. I could be out having fun - but I'm sorting through the junk emails that SpamButcher's been fooled by.
To fess up - I've been busy lately - so this is the first time I've engaged in this exercise in about 10 days. While the product's working well - I'm currently sifting through about 40 missed messages.
The only point of this game is to figure out how to make SpamButcher perform better. I'm looking for patterns in the spam that can be incorporated into the product.
This time I've noticed something significant - almost every missed message was listed in the CBL blacklist.
Users can turn on blacklist support (which defaults to the CBL) if they choose after installing. However, SpamButcher installs with blacklist support off. The reason is that we've had problems with false-positives from blacklists in the past.
However, if using a blacklist would boost SpamButcher from being 98% effective up to 99.5% - that could make a big difference in user experience (and sales). If the difference is really that big - perhaps steps could be taken to minimize the implications if the CBL started going berserk.
However, there seems to be a flaw in my methodology.
When I'm doing my "spam audit" - I'm checking to see if incoming messages are listed in the CBL when I'm doing the audit. This doesn't tell me if they were actually in the CBL when they were received. The CBL only has value to the extent it predicts and prevents future spam email. The apparent fact that most spam-sending addresses get documented there at some point isn't really indicative of its usefulness.
So, is it worth re-investigating whether blacklist support should be on in SpamButcher by default?
The answer is "yes" - but I need to do some further research on the Blacklist's real effectiveness before making any code changes.
(in theory these kinds of articles are supposed to go on my new blog, but I've got some really fun stuff there now I don't want to "pollute" with anti-spam drivel - at least for now)