The scores assigned to those rules are actually evolved by an automated Genetic Algorithm, thus are strictly results oriented.
The creation of new rules to test and generate scores fore for is really a manual thing, and is done based on human observation of emails by those who author rules. Since that part is human generated there's likely to be some psychological analysis, depending on who wrote the rule, but it's really a matter of how the rule author thinks about things and not a matter of policy.
Which proposed rules are used and which are rejected is also a strictly results-oriented process.. generally based on looking at the number of spam and nonspam hits a rule generates. Generally the S/O ratio is used as a first measure of the quality of a rule.
As for the upcoming Bayes classifier.. well... it's a learning automata so it can't really take psyche into account.
Razor/pyzor/DCC are checksum clearing houses. Psychology of spammers isn't something they can even begin to consider as they don't even analyze what the contents of an email are at all, other than to generate a hash of them. These tools merely tell you if someone else has already reported an email as being spam (or simply bulk in the case of DCC).
At 05:11 PM 2/14/2003 +0100, Tony Earnshaw wrote:
Hi list, I'm sure this is a chestnut, but then again I'm a beginner.Watching things happen during the last few months has been interesting. It strikes me that by far and away most (not all) spammers are inordinately dumb, if not cretins. That's the nature of the beast. However, it would also seem that much of the motivation (not "making money", but "how can I do it?") has parallels in the cracker world: trojans especially, but also many idiot would-be l33t virus-author wannabees. Can anyone give me refs to work done on the spammer psyche, if there is such a thing, available on the Internet? Is psyche taken into account by the present SA team? Or Razor/Pyzor people? Or is SA simply result driven? Just interested. Tony
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