Spamassassin

[xenon2000]

Just got pr0n spam through my Planetquake email account (go GSI!) But it only went as far as a banner, followed by this transcript:

SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ----------------------
SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered
SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future.
SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
SPAM:
SPAM: Content analysis details: (11.3 hits, 5 required)
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Subject has an exclamation mark
SPAM: Hit! (2.7 points) BODY: Claims you can be removed from the list
SPAM: Hit! (1.5 points) BODY: Asks you to click below
SPAM: Hit! (1.0 point) BODY: No such thing as a free lunch (3)
SPAM: Hit! (0.1 points) BODY: Uses words and phrases which indicate porn (10)
SPAM: Hit! (1.8 points) BODY: Tells you to click on a URL
SPAM: Hit! (3.2 points) HTML-only mail, with no text version
SPAM: Hit! (0.5 points) Forged hotmail.com 'Received:' header found
SPAM:
SPAM: -------------------- End of SpamAssassin results ---------------------

I checked out the site, and it looks like it's something installed by either Blueyonder or GSI (it was sent to my GSI account but that one redirects to my BY one). Anyone else seen it?

All it's done is edit the email message and attach a textfile with the transcript included. It didn't even block the mail! So basically, now I still get the spam mail in my inbox, only with less words. AND it looks like it could easily filter out perfectly normal mail using those hitpoints.

*sigh*

 

[Testin da Cable]

iirc it's all in how the proggy is installed mate. without looking at their site, I seem to remember stuff about making it more it less sensitive. iow, it can be made to block mail if you like.

 

[xenon2000]

According to the site it's completely controlled by the ISP/admin. I don't even know who it is atm :|

 

[stu]

Spamassassin is actually bloody good. It's installed by whoever runs the POP server. And 5 points is about right - me and Daz spent a while messing around with it, getting the right sensitivity, and at 5 it nails pretty much every spam mail I get, and very rarely hits false positives - the only ones you get are emails sent by automated services (eg when you order something through Amazon) because they share a lot of similarities with spam.

The idea is you apply a filter to your inbox that moves any email tagged by spamassassin to a spam folder, then every few days you can have a quick look, check if there's any false positives (easy enough to spot) and delete the rest.

 

[Durzel]

The reason you still get the mail is that spam filters, like most computer programmes, dont have actual intelligence but instead rely on heurisitics and genetic algorithms. At least by tagging the email you can decide what to do with it appropriately.

We have a spam filter at work that blocks any email with an "offensive" word in - it doesn't even tell me that someone actually tried mailing me. In short, its a bag of crap.

SpamAssassin is the best there is!

 

[xenon2000]

Yeah yeah, I got the whole point of it shortly after Stu's post... over two weeks ago.

I now have them filtered.