Just a few hints and tips...

1) The connection speed is an user customizable setting. I.e. T3 or not T3 is irrelevant! I hope you realize why they're advertising themselves as T3 (and it works obviously ). As soon as they no longer reach their clientele they'll switch to Cable/DSL... A filter based upon the connection speed is nonsense!

2) Enable the Location column and Extended Tooltips. If a file has many (obviously too many) sources then take a look at the locations. There's certainly a pattern in the IP addresses and add it to your block host list (like 69.113.*.* - try to be as precise as possible).

3) Enable the Vendor/Version column in the download table. I hope you'll see a pattern whenever LimeWire says "download is corrupt" and it is a signal for you to process #2.

4) Well, #4 is an implication of #1 and the fact the setting is customizable. Do you remember what the default connection speed in the LimeWire setup wizard was? Yes? Guess how many ppl. hit the next button without reading it? Well, enjoy the blazing fast downloads from these sources.

You don't find any proper pattern in that kind of spam anymore. Some spammers are obviously intentionally sending lots of results with random IP addresses making it impossible for the end user to identify the few real addresses of the spammer in a group of results.

Most spammers are also using the LimeWire vendor code / vendor string of the most popular LimeWire version.

It is quite impossible to filter spam manually and some spam can't even be identified automatically on the client side: There are some spammers that send results consisting of filenames of existing files, a slightly varying file size, varying urns and completely random source addresses (incidentally the speed shows mostly T3+). These special spammers don't have the goal of advertising crap but of making it impossible to find and download certain files. And they are rather successful at it.

trap_jaw: I jsut read the description of your spam filter, and it looks quite promising.

Is there potential for users to be able to share their filters too, or is it just intended for individual use?

Anyway--thanks and congrats once again.

I don't think my little spam filter thingy will make it into LimeWire. It's not too user-friendly and it may be using too much resources.

That said, this is more of a filter for the individual. Exchanging training data for your spam filter is possible but I don't know if it will do any good.

Any file less than 1 MB I ignore. I have found that these are viruses, iPod ducks, free credit cards, redirectors, etc.

When first on p2p I would select these and was overwhelmed with junk.

I haven't bothered to read all the messages/replies on this thread about the annoying iPid photo/advertisement (sorry!) but there's an insanely simple solution. I only really got the ad when I was downloading tv shows or movies. TV shows & movies quite large sized files, and the iPod ad is tiny (it's only a picture), even though it may be the same format as a movie/tv show (because it flashes the text). So before I click to download a file such as a tv show or movie, I check to see the file size and be sure that it's appropriate. A movie will be somewhere in the megabites and the stuipd iPod ad is only a few kilobytes (or something) in size. So if your proposed download should be large in size and the file size is tiny, it's probably the ad. Comprende? I think I made it sound more complicated than it it, sorry folks.

Here's a handy guide for you mildy technologically-impaired folks (I have this taped to the side of my monitor, ha.):

1 byte = 1 byte
1 kilobyte (KB) = 1 000 bytes
1 megabyte (Mb) = 1 000 kilobytes (KB)
1 gigabyte (GB) = 1 000 megabytes (Mb)

For reference, an old computer's hard drive would be about 5GB, new ones are around 100-160GB. You average song is about 4 000 KB, a 1/2 hour tv show is between 50 000 KB and 250 000 KB and the stupid iPod ad is 30 - 100 KB. And there you have it. I hope that helps.

This topic was started whilst I was away from the forum but very glad it's resurfaced & LW contributors are admitting they are working on it. The spam AFAIK not only comes from T3 but T1 also. My concern with T3 is corrupt audio files. ie: T3 Spammers; mp3 Bit-Rates Versus File Sizes

As far as the spam goes, although it's been discussed many times I did decide to highlight one thread discussing the matter; autogenerated spam results

As an answer i suggested before, it might not be perfect but it would have many other benefits for those who know what they're looking for; here's some examples of what I mean: (1.) Xtra search option, & a few more of very many examples of the practicality of the same purpose (2.) i pod ads, (3.) the free ipod scumbag, (4.) Ability to block "fake" files (adverts)?, (5.) Size Filter

I just hope it doesn't turn out like email spam. Once email sizes were increased, so did the size of spam.

I used to get the i-pod add all the time too. Now i wish for it back!! the biggest results i get now are jpg's containing the worm_mugly I virus which then started downloading other trojans. It was soo hard to get rid of. Please! there MUST be a way to deal with these "people".