SpamAssassin at SMTP time with exim

Tue May 7 17:08:36 PDT 2002

> Hrmmmm.
> 
> What about false positives?  This might not bother you, personally, but:

I can speak to that, as having had a client where allowing some spam was
necessary because he wants no good-mail lost due to false hits.

At that client, all things that flagged as spam were dropped into a
moderator account.  The local junior admin had a daily task to clean
the spam trap.  Hitting "d" is such a cheerful thing :)  If anything
snuck through that should not have been nailed, they're added to the 
whitelist actively.

That way only the moderators need to deal with that shlock.  Much like 
the efforts of David here to defend us :)

> What about user concerns for false positives?
> 
> Lastly, I'd just as soon spammers not catch on that their messages are
> being filtered, based on heuristic properties that they can avoid.  

I'd rather that they catch on that I'll send their butt to the state's
attorney, if I can catch 'em.

> I
> have a sneaky suspicion that a handful of spammers are already checking
> their messages against SpamAssassin.  I have a feeling that before long,
> SpamAssasin will lose its efficacy, thanks to an ever-increasing spiral
> of spammers making SA-friendly e-mails, and SA having to adapt to ever
> more ingenious heuristics.

comparisons can be fascinating heuristics, all on their own.

For those who can afford the burden it places on new contacts, you can do
a particularly twisted thing with list software, and make it help you with
this;  make them "have to subscribe" or use the password-of-the-day to
get by the receptionist.   Doesn't work for certain kinds of mail accounts,
but it's a thought.

> Though, I was really just trying to be cute and point out that the
> technology that you were advocating is already censoring you. :D
> 
> -danny

 Heather Stern - star at starshine.org -*- Starshine Technical Services
        Sysadmin Support & Training -*- consulting at starshine.org 