Remember SpamArchive.org, the site that allowed random Internet users to upload their spam? It was set up back in 2002 by <a href=’http://www.ciphertrust.com’>CipherTrust, one of the commercial anti-spam vendors, to offer a large, ‘standard’ database of known spam to be used for testing, developing, and benchmarking anti-spam tools, and for anti-spam researchers. It got a bit of coverage at <a href=’http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/21/028220′>Slashdot and Wired News at the time.
It never really was too useful for its supposed purposes, though, at least for us in SpamAssassin, since:
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it collected submissions from random internet users, without vetting, and therefore couldn’t be guaranteed to be 100% valid;
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it ‘anonymized’ the headers too much for the spam to be useful in testing a filter like SpamAssassin, which requires correct header data for valid results;
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collecting spam has never been a problem; avoiding it is ;)
Anyway, looks like Ciphertrust/Secure Computing have since lost interest, since they’ve allowed the domain to lapse. It has instead been picked up by a domain speculator:
Domain ID:D134033677-LROR Domain Name:SPAMARCHIVE.ORG Created On:30-Nov-2006 18:52:13 UTC Last Updated On:01-Dec-2006 12:42:26 UTC Expiration Date:30-Nov-2007 18:52:13 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:PSI-USA, Inc. dba Domain Robot (R68-LROR) Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED Registrant ID:ABM-9376887 Registrant Name:Robert Farris Registrant Organization:Virtual Clicks Registrant Street1:P.O. Box 232471 Registrant Street2: Registrant Street3: Registrant City:San Diego Registrant State/Province:US Registrant Postal Code:92023 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.7205968887 Registrant Phone Ext.: Registrant FAX: Registrant FAX Ext.: Registrant Email:domain_whois@virtualclicks.com Name Server:NS1.DIGITAL-DNS-SERVER.COM Name Server:NS2.DIGITAL-DNS-SERVER.COM
A visit to http://www.spamarchive.org/ now reveals a parking page, which grabs the browser window, forces it to front, maximises it, attempts to bookmark it, add it to the Firefox sidebar — and who knows what else ;)