The News Review:
- New Puzzles That Tell Humans From Machines
- Network Box: New technique to fight spam: Network Box releases …
- Slamming spam
- I-Team: 485 funding unknown until 2010
New Puzzles That Tell Humans From Machines
New York Times
”The Times is paying reCaptcha for its help in digitizing its archives said Marc Frons chief technology officer digital operations. So far puzzling words in archives covering about 30 years have been deciphered with reCaptchas he said. Many people worry that as machines become smarter the days of captcha protection will be numbered whether the puzzles take the form of distorted text audio snippets or rotated images. But Henry Baird a professor in the department of computer science and engineering at Lehigh University disagrees. Baird and colleagues have proposed a system for captchas that like Google’s can be woven into the theme of a Web site. “Machines’ abilities are slowly improving” he said “but I think there is still a huge gap between human inborn perceptual abilities and machine skills.
Network Box: New technique to fight spam: Network Box releases …
TMCnet
Today’s anti-spam systems will rarely reach more than 95-98 per cent accuracy which when you consider the amount of email sent still lets through a significant number of spam emails. Challenge response systems used in isolation are notoriously unsuccessful with as little as 40 per cent of genuine email getting through the system as senders are reluctant to go through the challenge system. The difference with Network Box’s eMail Relationship Manager is that it analyses and learns from the behaviour of the sender and recipient of an email to give a score to the email which is applied in addition to traditional anti-spam filter analysis. It works by:Maintaining a central database to store existing email accounts managed by Network Box on behalf of the email recipient (so genuine email from addresses kept in a users address book will be white-listed assuming their content passes the traditional filter analysis which naturally includes the reputation of the sender).
Related from Guanxithebook: House of Commons network hit by Conficker computer worm
Slamming spam
ttawa Business Journal
That’s a big problem for Canadian companies who racked up $62. 7 billion in online sales that year according to Industry Canada. With the federal government looking to pass the Electronic Commerce Protection Act to mitigate productivity losses local businesses weigh in on how spam has affected them – and how they’re fighting it. David Skoll president of anti-spam software firm Roaring Penguin Software Where it does affect people is in two areas: (first) it generally makes e-mail less reliable and less trustworthy. The second and much bigger problem is criminally motivated spam like identity theft spam and “phishing” attacks. Those are not just annoying; they can cost lots of money. They can cause tremendous hassle if you try and clean out your credit rating and we’re seeing a lot more criminals getting into the spamming business.
I-Team: 485 funding unknown until 2010
Charlottebserver.com
– The governor’s promise to find funding for early construction on the last leg of Interstate 485 is on holdand it will be until 2010. The I-Team has learned the air quality hurdles that threaten funding for the project can’t be cleared until January. That’s when transportation officials from the area will begin submitting a transportation conformity plan that tells the Environmental Protection Agency about predicted air quality in the area and long-range plans for road construction. The Charlotte department of transportation’s Norm Steinman says the city won’t pass federal muster in 2009. Currently the American Lung Association ranks Charlotte as the 8th most smoggy city in the U. Hot dry weather erased gains in air quality measures in 2007 and 2008.