From Tim Lister
Recent writers have extolled the virtue of Bayesian spam filters but missed the point (8 March, p 42 and 29 March, p 29). There are two obvious approaches, called whitelisting and blacklisting, for controlling unsolicited access to computers – not just email – and both have important virtues.
Whitelisting works like this. Imagine that you have a new computer and software, and your first task is to set up an account with an ISP to get connected. Your email client then whitelists the ISP, while everybody else is blacklisted, so that you can at least get important service announcements.
It is then up to you to extend the whitelist with the email addresses of the people and organisations that you wish to communicate with. This is a little tedious, but you only have to do it once per address, and you are then in the loop of your own electronic community, and you will never receive “Yevgena is a sultry Russian temptress” again.
Erskineville, New South Wales, Australia
