Sun, May 21, 2006 - Page 17 News List

The battle to can spam

Bill Gates had predicted that spam would be eradicated by this year. So why are messages about penis-enlargement pills, Nigerian financial windfalls and hot stocks still clogging up in-boxed?

By Tom Zeller Jr.  /  NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , NEW YORK

"Scam DNA basically codifies this into an algorithm," Sergeant said, "where, hopefully, we can detect this going on and find new scams based on the old scams."

But even if it works, the amount of spam it would eliminate from the overall deluge of junk mail would be negligible by almost any measure, and Sergeant and his team will still be forced into encounters with "Cialis" and "st0x" and "Viiiiagra."

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