Improving the algorithms than filter spam from inboxes is a losing proposition. A new answer? Follow the money. One project asks volunteers to send in their spam, and it uses these submissions to build a large database linking sites to known spammers. To date, it has helped take down more than 32,000 of these junk mail sites. The article doesn't mention what happens to the spammers themselves. Most likely they set up shop somewhere else. As I wrote in December:
How do spammers get paid? Is it possible and feasible to follow the money? Who has authority to cut off spammer’s access to whatever funding mechanisms keep the economics of their trade alive? And whatever happened with the bounty, from Microsoft I think, for successful spam procescution? I wonder if there’s an economic solution to a problem driving by such a low barrier for entry and a high rate of return (compared, at least, to the potential for getting punished).
Anything that doesn't put spammers out of business permanently is a treatment, not a solution.
