Please Avoid Elipses in Subject Lines

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2015-05-11 at 14:43 +0300, Eli Wapniarski wrote:
> What makes the Elipse and for that matter any use of a period inside  
> the subject line so bad is that most filters rely on regular  
> expressions to filter.

Most filters use more than one criterion, and don't make yes or no
decisions based solely on the Subject line.

> The period is a special character in regex processors which means all.

Actually it means any single character, but whatever ...

> If one were to create a simple filter based on the period, they would
> be blocking everything. So this trick  is utilized to get past those
> filters.
> 
> A manual creation of the filter which would include \. would be
> required.

What you're saying is that filtering ellipses requires you to escape the
'.' character. I assume you must be doing that already, on the
presumption that ellipses are evil. So what is your point?

> Until I created the filter to block out elipses. I would get all sorts
> of bad mail trying to sell me all sorts of stuff that you would not  
> want sold to you, or to visit all sorts of sites you would not want  
> your kids to visit. So, to answer your question, yes I have blocked  
> elipses for a very long time. I will continue to block elipses, and I
> am quite confident, because of this issue other aggressive filters  
> will also block them.
> 
> You can do what you wish. I am not going to get into a trolling match
> with anyone. I am relating my experience and made a request thats all.
> If you choose to continue using elipses thats fine thats up to you. :)

Thanks, I intend to. BTW, the word is "ellipse" (two l's).

Also, please don't top-post. See the list Guidelines.

poc