[Mimedefang] Administrator emails missing

[Brett M. Mullins]

I realize I'm pretty new at this, so folks like David and Jason correct
me if I'm wrong -

- but it looks to me, Scott, as if you are both bouncing the message AND
adding the spam report.  But if you bounce it, it never gets to the
recipient, right?  So why bother adding the SA report?

Also, if you haven't already been using SA for a while, you will find
(as I have) that there are some few messages that can have SA scores
above 5 and still not be spam - like tigerdirect.com's email lists to
people who subscribe to their mailing list.

My personal findings are that it is very probably spam if the score is 6
or higher, and definitely spam if the score is 8 or above (I have
several domain names registered under a "public" address that gets some
300 spam messages a day).  A spam score as low as 5 is bound to reject
some valid messages, unless none of your addresses being filtered belong
to any mailing lists.  And I rather doubt the admins of places like
tigerdirect.com will appreciate bounce messages from a verified
subscriber - better to just drop it if you're going to leave the SA
"spam" score so low...

Another BIG thing to consider here - there are some few advertising
companies who are currently suing companies who use spam-filtering
software, claiming a denial of "freedom of speech".  Yes, the lawyers
are laughing at them, but that's beside the point - lawsuits have
primarily always been a matter of who can throw the most money at a
situation.  A bounce message will inform spammers that you are rejecting
their mail specifically *because* it is spam - which could open you up
for a similar lawsuit.  Again, better to just drop it, IMHO.  (however,
I happily bounce virus infected messages...)

As a last sad note, some few spammers are good enough to still get some
spam past all the filters, with SA scores as low as 1...  by using
html-only pictures rather than text.  Oh well, no filter is perfect (so
far)...
                                            
_________________________
Brett Mullins
brett at jesinc.net

 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Harris [mailto:scott at ozmatrix.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 9:52 AM
>  <snip>

>                 # if we're quite confident it actually IS spam, just
> bounce it
>                 if ($hits > 5) {
>                 $bounce = "yes";
>                 action_quarantine_entire_message();
>                 action_bounce("Message seems to be spam, rejected");
>                 }
> 
>                 # If you find the SA report useful, add it, I guess...
>                 action_add_part($entity, "text/plain", "-suggest",
>                                 "$report\n",
>                                 "SpamAssassinReport.txt", "inline");
>             } else {
>                 # Delete any existing X-Spam-Score header?
>                 action_delete_header("X-Spam-Score");
>             }
> 
> 
>                 # Now this is the real filter_end
>                 sub filter_end ($) {
>                 my($entity) = @_;
> 
>                 # Do the real work
>                 filter_end_aux($entity);
> 
>                 # And send notifications
>                 send_quarantine_notifications();