http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=440960


in reply to Just Another Discussion of Spam

I know, there is a great temptation to react to spam. Don't!

I really answered spam messages several times, only to find out that the From: addresses were bogus, and that I was sending (sometimes quite insulting) answers to real people that never did me any harm.

Spam is an issue that is really unnerving. But for the current spam I get, ther might be a new way of filtering: spell checking. Now that should be some kind of smart spell checking ... most spam uses deliberate spelling mistakes in the Subject: so SpamAssassin an the like would not filter it out easily. Anyway, those spelling mistakes are maybe not the same ones that real people make? We could increase the spam score of a message for some special kinds of spelling mistakes. I am not a linguist, but I am definitely annoyed by spam mails that don't even get their Subject in a proper spelling.

But maybe my idea is no good after all, because in the end, I really prefer getting spam over losing one single genuine mail, that's also the reason why I don't let any scripts delete spam mails automatically.