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