

Ask HN: I've been collecting Webform-spam for a year - what could I use it for? - arnorhs

Ok, this will sound stupid.<p>I've always noticed how much spam every single web-form you make tends to get if you don't implement a captcha or something like that. So I started recording some of that spam through a completely open web form<p>Now I have 729k entries and the DB is growing faster and faster. Does HN have any idea what that "data" can be used for?<p>A little more info here: http://arnorhs.com/2010/02/23/stats-on-spam/
======
yannis
Machine learning students can use it to train anti-spam filter designs.
However, you will need to add more details for example how did you collect
them did you use a filter? If you did perhaps more valuable would have been
the spam that got away!

~~~
arnorhs
I collected them using the web form on www.spambotlove.com

It's a totally unfiltered web form with no captcha or anything, designed
specifically to be easy for spam software to submit into it.

I was thinking about using it input for generating images or something. As a
random seed, maybe. I don't know.

