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Want to understand the problems of false positives in anti-spam filters? MacSlash lost its domain name because its renewal notices got filtered.

Sunbelt Software iHateSpam is a plug-in Outlook anti-spam filter.

WSJ reports on growing anti-spam legislation efforts. However, these only affect the most blatantly fraudulent practices, and wouldn’t eliminate the right for an essentially unlimited number of businesses to send at least one email each, with the burden still on each user to unsubscribe from every company (it’s opt-out instead of opt-in). The Direct Marketing Association says: “We think our guidelines are working and are very concerned about overly broad regulation.” If you define working as stopping any anti-spam legislation that might actually reduce spam (as they do), then their efforts are certainly “working”.

And one more absurdly convoluted but still user-unfriendly reverse spam filter, announced on nanae.

Another lame reverse filter.

Why waste your time with Filtering E-Mail with Postfix and Procmail when SpamAssassin does it so much better and is priced to move?

Good overview of Razor v2 anti-spam database, which is accessible through SpamAssassin.

The second unworkable anti-spam idea of the day. SSMTP would give additional trace information to make it easier to track down spammers, except that there is absolutely no adoption model in which it adds value. Early users of a product have to get value or you’ll never get to a large number of users.

Reverse filtering, i.e., only allowing email from someone who is in on your allowed list or who takes the extra step of replying to a confirmation, is not practical for almost anyone, since it eliminates spam by making email a less effective communications medium. Besides, if it were widely adopted, spammers would start implementing auto-confirmations.

Habeas Corpus The “Habeas Corpus Act” was passed in the reign of Charles II., and defined a provision of similar character in Magna Charta, to which also it added certain details. The Act provides:

1. That any man taken to prison can insist that the person who charges him with crime shall bring him bodily before a judge, and state the why and wherefore of his detention. As soon as this is done, the judge is to decide whether or not the accused is to be admitted to bail. [No one, therefore, can be imprisoned on mere suspicion, and no one can be left in prison any indefinite time at the caprice of the powers that be. Imprisonment, in fact, must be either for punishment after conviction, or for safe custody till the time of trial.]
2. It provides that every person accused of crime shall have the question of his guilt decided by a jury of twelve men, and not by a Government agent or nominee.
3. No prisoner can be tried a second time on the same charge.
4. Every prisoner may insist on being examined within twenty days of his arrest, and tried by jury the next session.
5. No defendant is to be sent to prison beyond the seas, either within or without the British dominions.

The exact meaning of the words Habeas Corpus is this: “You are to produce the body.” That is, You, the accuser, are to bring before the judge the body of the accused, that he may be tried and receive the award of the court, and you (the accused) are to abide by the award of the judge.

Suspension of Habeas Corpus. When the Habeas Corpus Act is suspended, the Crown can imprison persons on suspicion, without giving any reason for so doing; the person so arrested cannot insist on being brought before a judge to decide whether or not he can be admitted to bail; it is not needful to try the prisoner at the following assize; and the prisoner may be confined in any prison the Crown chooses to select for the purpose.