Experimental and Theoretical ways to get rid of Spam

This page is for the development of ideas and projects to move SpamAssassin and related spam fighting projects forward. The idea here is to write about ideas and projects the represent the cutting edge ideas that are in development related to spam fighting.

New Black/White/Yellow List Technologies

We are all familiar with black lists. Black lists are DNS lists that where IP addresses of spammer are looked up. You send a request to the list with the IP and if it is in the blacklist then you bounce the email. Sounds simple enough except for the false positives.

White lists help reduce false positives. If an IP address is white listed then you can just pass it and not look at black lists.

Yellow lists are lists of hosts that send a mix of spam and non-spam. Email services like Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail are examples of mixed source servers. These servers should never be either black or white listed. These are servers where the IP address yields no useful information as to whether the message is spam or ham.

Multi-Color List Processing Logic

When looking at lists from a black/white/yellow perspective there is an order to the list processing. First the yellow lists are tested. If the message is yellow listed then checking black and white lists isn't necessary. The the white lists are checked. If the message is white listed it can be passed without having to run it through SA or SA can short circuit the tests and declare the message ham. Then the black lists are checked and if it is in a trusted blacklist or several less trusted blacklists the message can be rejected.