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A temporary stopgap, at best, especially in a world where so few people use it. Encryption is maximally useful when people don't see -- or it doesn't matter th
by randallsquared 17y ago
A temporary stopgap, at best, especially in a world where so few people use it. Encryption is maximally useful when people don't see -- or it doesn't matter that people see -- that you're using it.
My guess is that people who really, really want to protect what they saying and that they're saying it use nonsense spam as a steganographic medium.
- philwelch 17y agoMaybe they already are--what other purpose would there be for nonsense spam?
- bd 17y agoNonsense spam messes with adaptive spam filters. They learn bad rules, thus it becomes harder to identify real spam. ---- Edit: I don't know how effective it really is, but this seems to be the motivation for why spammers at least try this. Many more details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_poisoning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_poisoning
- philwelch 17y agoWouldn't you need significantly more noise spam than signal spam for that to work? Is that what we indeed observe?
- randallsquared 17y agoBut since that's a public good (for spammers) it's hard to understand why they'd do it instead of sending a profit-making campaign, any given time.