Re: Let's try to be productive...

On 01/06/2014 08:33 AM, Richard Clayton wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 5, 2014, at 7:26 PM, Barry Shein <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
> 
>>> 1. High volume "bulk" mailers 2. Phishers 3. Direct fraudulent
>>> or trust appeals 4. High volume unsolicited email 5. What about
>>> email dictionary attacks and similar? 6. purely malicious or
>>> hard to discern very high volume email
> 
> the problem with this "taxonomy" is that it is mixing up issues
> related to the nature of the sender, the nature of the content and
> the degree to which the email is targeted
> 
> as such I don't see much value to it :(

This is my issue with much of this thread too.  It's conflating
content, delivery mechanism, intentions, degree of violating laws not
related specifically to the Internet specifically (eg: fraud vs.
promoting stuff that ain't illegal), attack support methodologies and
others with the definition of spam.

These categories heavily overlap each other.  Worse, some of them
aren't necessarily spam at all.  A high volume bulk sender sending
only material to those who explicitly want it isn't spamming at all.

I can't see how such a blenderized taxonomy is at all useful in trying
to define spam, let alone combat it.

This is highly reminiscent of confused conversations back in the late
90's.

Before going down this taxonomic path, or any other, it's useful to
identify what we're trying to do with it.

For example, if we're trying to figure out means by which spam can be
made non-economic, a taxonomy of monitization methods is useful.

In contrast, a taxonomy of spam sending mechanisms helps you design
filters, sometimes to help target LE, etc.

So, what are you trying to do here?

I personally have several different taxonomies, each used for a
different particular purpose.
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