spam avoidance (was Re: cpu speed problem)

[Aaron Konstam]

On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 19:40 +0930, Tim wrote:
> 
> In my experience, it's rather bad.  I see quite a few false positives,
> and a lot of spam getting through.  It can be trained better, but
> that's
> hard for me to do if I run it where it needs to be run - on the
> (remote)
> mailserver, hosted by someone else who only give me limited control.
> Most of the un-marked spam that I see rarely has enough points to
> qualify, so it's hard to train effectively, anyway.  I've yet to see a
> hosted mail server doing spam assassin well.  There probably are some
> expensive ones that manage it, but I'm not going to use an expensive
> mail service.
> 
> This is a fundamental issue with using something like spam assassin:
> 
> It needs to be run on the SMTP server, as an INPUT filter, so that
> spam
> gets refused before entry, with a notification as part of the SMTP
> transaction.  That way, the sender (the actual sender, not just the
> address in the "from" header) gets notified that the message wasn't
> accepted, and a genuine sender can try again in a manner that doesn't
> get rejected (e.g. without HTML, or an attachment, or other things).
> Otherwise, if they're not told, they think you got their mail, and
> they
> didn't.  That's a serious problem if you try to conduct any business
> through e-mail.
> 
> If you run it locally, your external SMTP server has already accepted
> the mail, it's too late to reject it.  People who mailed you and
> accidentally got filtered out as spam have no idea.  And, you have to
> filter a lot of mail yourself.  Not to mention havi thng to check the
> junk
> mailbox, yourself, which defeats the purpose of running an anti-spam
> system. 
You are asking a lot form a spam filter. But let me share with you this:
1. For the first time spamassassiin really works with evolution in f7.
I get no more that 1 spam message a week out of maybe a 1000 messages.

2. It is impossible to run a spam filter without checking the junk
folder since you will lose a few files that you wanted to see. Training
in this regard is everything.

3. Asking your spam filter to notify the spam senders is crazy. Why
would I want all the cialis vender's and Nigeria con men to know their
mail did not get through.

4. I guess being a New Yorker I have a thicker skin. I have never gotten
a message from a crazy that I felt would damage my equilibrium. If one
appears I put him in my blacklist and he disappears.

The real thing is communication channels are designed to communicate.
And some communication does not belong on a public list. To tell people
they can't communicate with you except if they know the secret code word
to me is rude. I have no good examples in e-mail communication but If I
could e-mail you directly to give you examples why having an unlisted
phone number can be between disastrous to life threatening in some
situations.

But since I can't communicate with you off the list lets drop the
subject.



--
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Humor in the Court: Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample? A: Yes,
I have been since early childhood.
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Aaron Konstam telephone: (210) 656-0355 e-mail: akonstam at sbcglobal.net