The systems I've put in place on Klaki to block comment spam and e-mail spam work pretty well.

I'm watching the error logs for my web server at the moment; every few seconds a rash of spambots are rejected by my "browser behavior profiler" which basically rejects comments from IPs that don't behave like regular users.

I'm proud of how well the system works, but it's really depressing to see the amount of computing resources (and electricity) that are being wasted constantly on producing and combating online vandalism.

(While writing this, on the order of a few hundred spam comments have been blocked. I'm not sure how many, if any got through.)

...

Earlier today I was chatting with my mom about problems she's been having receiving and delivering e-mail. Both are caused by limitations of the various anti-spam systems installed, either on Klaki or outside. I found some problems, fixed what I could, and gave her a rather lame explanation for why e-mail is broken.

Keeping e-mail usable is a constant struggle, largely invisible to the average user who only notices when the systems make mistakes; either blocking or delaying legitimate mail, or letting some of the junk through.

It's a thankless and fundamentally unsolvable task. Spam is in the eye of the beholder; automated systems have a very hard time telling which is which. Identifying those who send the spam is also hard, as the spammers do their best to send their junk from the same sources as legitimate mail.

Then once you've got a semi-decent system in place to block the spam, you suddenly have to worry about how your system interacts with other people's systems and take care you don't "look like" a spammer by accident. If you fail your e-mail doesn't get delivered. And you will fail.

There are many interesting challenges involved, but when you step back to think about the bigger picture it becomes an incredibly depressing task.

So much work to accomplish... nothing. If you maintain the status quo and e-mail doesn't get worse, then you've "won". Ick.

...

I guess that's one of the reasons I switched jobs and am now working on other things. :-)