The challenge of Spam Filtering uncovered…
When confronted with the numerous amounts of spam e4ach day, one begins to wonder what spam filters are there for 
anyway? Why have these spam filters not improved to such an extent that spam does not filter through at all? Why do we still need to painstakingly search through every single email we receive – to be sure it is not in fact spam? What are the filters there for, if not to filter?
Truth be told – spam filters have steadily been improved upon, on the daily in fact – but so too have spammers and their various techniques employed, therefore it is imperative for spam filter technicians to continually be on the alert – and to keep innovatively progressing the war against spam.
There are steps being taken to ensure spam does not continue to filter through into ones computer, for example the many conferences held throughout the year – (since the mid 80’s in fact), such as CEAS and MIT Spam Conference. From the onset – when spam filters consisted of predominantly USENET cancelbots (where mathematical techniques such as the Breidbart Index were utilized) to the more advanced methods employed today, one can safely say that Spam filter engineers are wholly intelligent – but so are the spammers themselves.
Although regarded as a security threat to any computer it has infiltrated, spam’s are actually quite different from other computer threats, in that spam’s are more of an irritant than anything else.
The daunting truth however is that most antispyware applications are only able to capture and eradicate approximately 95% of all spam’s that enter into a computer system. Customer satisfaction for a 95% antispyware application dealing with malware specifically is actually quite high – that is assuming the remaining 5% of malware does not negatively affect the computer system in question. However, spam is entirely different – should 5% of spam enter into a system – this spam will affect the system definitely – and will eventually cause major annoyances for the computer user. The fact is that what was ‘state-of-the-art accuracy’ a few years ago is simply not cutting the grain these days – therefore spam filter technicians need to take a good, hard look at the present state of affairs and move with the times accordingly.
Spam: be gone!
That is my take on the spam filtering saga – take it or leave it!
