From Spam Tools
From: | "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com> |
Date: | Thu, 12 Aug 2004 11:20:49 -0700 |
Reply-To: | In Reply To: |
In message <MHEGIFHMACFNNIMMBACAGEMDIGAA.sethg@GoodmanAssociates.com>,
"Seth Goodman" <sethg@GoodmanAssociates.com> wrote:
>> Lastly, assume that each user of this filter would like to
>> pre-populate his or her personal whitelist with the complete
>> set of e-mail addresses of all of the people (or other entities)
>> to whom the given filter user had previously sent mail.
>
>That approach would work well for the default setup. It also depends on
>people's habits for saving outgoing messages, i.e. how long do they keep
>them.
That's not my problem man. I just would like to provide _some_ tools
which _might_ (under the Right Circumstances) assist users in pre-
populating their personal whitelists.
If the tools don't work for some people, e.g. because of the strange way
in which they have saved their own outgoing messages (or because of their
failure to save them at all), well then that's not something I can do
anything about, so I'm off the hook.
To paraphrase Lincoln, it will be a Good Thing if I can provide a tool that
will help some of the people some of the time... at least as regards to
this whitelist pre-population issue/task.
>Though Outlook's default is to save all outgoing messages to the
>"Sent Items" folder, some people save outgoing messages to multiple
>folders based on the recipient, category or other factors.
OK.
>One option
>in Outlook is to save replies in the same folder as the original
>message, so depending on how people use this over-featured product, sent
>messages could be scattered all over the place.
Could be, but the user might then be expected to know... at the very least...
the names of the entire set of folders to which he/she has saved outgoing
messages. And even if they don't, once again, it's not my problem man.
I'll be happy if I can help some of the people some of the time.
>Since people can change
>their account settings at will, you aren't even guaranteed to be able to
>locate them by From: address, though there might be some other way.
They will probably be able to remembers the complete set of e-mail addresses
that they thmeselves have even used to identify themselves on outgoing
e-mail messages. And again, if they don't, then it's not my problem man.
>I'm sure you've already considered it, but what is wrong with the
>approach of using the Contact list as a starter? This probably contains
>95% of the correspondents for most people (determined from controlled
>scientific studies). In some cases (like me), it is 100% since I use
>the Outlook feature of automatically adding all outgoing addresses to
>the Contact list.
There's no problem at all with that idea. The only problem is that with
respect to the Outlook personal address list and its contents, I have the
same exact problem as I originally stated I had for the Outlook `Sent'
folder, i.e. I have no idea of its internal format, and also, I am not
aware of any open source software tools to read and decode those address
book files. So if anybody knows of any open source tool which can perform
THIS job, I would very much like to be informed about that also.
Allow me just to say further that I am totally agnostic when it comes to
the question of how best to pre-populate a given personal whitelist. I
have no religious beliefs in this area whatsoever and I would be happy to
use anything and everything that solves all, or even a part of the problem.
If I could develop or obtain a _set_ of whitelist pre-population tools
which could (a) obtain appropriate whitelist entries from the user's own
`Sent' folder(s) and which could also (b) obtain appropriate whitelist
entries from the user's personal address book then I would certainly like
to distribute both kinds of tools, and then just let the user's select
whichever one (or both) that is most suitable to their own circumstances.
>This feature was apparently added for the convenience
>of virus writers, who it appears were one of the key groups that set the
>design requirements for this product,
Good point.
So if I want source code for a software tool that can extract addresses
from a personal Outlook address book, I guess that I should just go out
and hire a virus writer! Hummm. I would have no problem with that. At
least this would give them some honest work for a change... keeping them
off the streets and out of trouble for a short while.
So now, where does one post a `HELP WANTED' ad for a virus writer?
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