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Yahoo tries harder to screen out spam

Through deals with Abaca and Return Path, Yahoo hopes to screen out spam better. It already uses thousands of PCs to identify spammers.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise Processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science. Credentials
  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Stephen Shankland
Yahoo anti-spam czar Mark Risher
Yahoo anti-spam czar Mark Risher Yahoo

Yahoo has signed a deal with start-up Abaca to help curtail spam on Yahoo Mail and has begun using Return Path technology to let companies know when and why their legitimate e-mail is being blocked.

Mark Risher, Yahoo's "anti-spam czar," described the move on the Yahoo Mail blog on Tuesday. He also described other efforts to cut down on spam:

One way we're turning up the heat on the spammers is by utilizing even more state-of-the-art technology. Recently, Yahoo's anti-spam team has been using a "supercomputer" consisting of thousands of individual PCs--part of our open source Hadoop project--to help detect spammers. We're teamed up with several top universities on this research, looking for more ways to find and block the bad guys even faster, before they can do their damage.

Risher also exhorted Yahoo Mail users to use the "Spam" and "Not Spam" buttons on Yahoo Mail to help Yahoo correct errors when spam isn't filtered out or legitimate e-mail is. "Clicking those buttons sends an immediate and powerful signal to our systems (and to me :) so that we can quickly try to correct the problem," he said.