[governance] spam policy (was: "Net Neutrality ...)

[Lee McKnight]

Am I the only one amused by the position being taken that filtering spam
is a devilish deviation from net neutrality?  

 I guess to be logically consistent we should all shut down our spam
filters so we're  net neutral. 

You first...

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile
>>> dan at musicunbound.com 11/08/07 5:13 PM >>>
At 2:51 PM -0800 11/8/07, Karl Auerbach wrote:
>Dan Krimm wrote:
>> I would only add to this that spam filters are best implemented with
end
>> users being given maximum control over their settings.
>
>Which, in turn, means that users must have a means to know what filters
>are in effect.
>
>This inability to know what is being filtered has caused significant
>concern and problems here in the US.
>
>Many companies that do filtering, whether in software in the user's
>machine or as something inserted the network path, are often loath to
>disclose the filters - they consider them to be highly proprietary
>information.
>
>Another potential principle of internet governance:  Every user has the
>right to know whether their traffic is being filtered and, if so, what
>those filters are.


There is an argument (devil's advocate) that suggests that if it were
easy
to find out how the filter algorithm works it could more easily be
bypassed
in the constantly-escalating spam wars, thus negating the value of the
filter tool.

So what is the technical compromise, or is it impossible?

Even if one holds the algorithm close to the chest, it might be useful
for
end users to know which messages are being filtered out, though that
could
lead to empirical testing by spammers to reverse-engineer the filter
criteria to some extent (at least, to discover temporarily non-filtered
options by trial and error).

Short of that, it would be nice to be given a menu of message types to
filter, and counts of messages filtered out (and if a particular message
seems like it's legitimate content, to retrieve that message -- but then
again you increase the ability to reverse-engineer).

What do you suggest here, Karl?

Dan
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