Header change format

[Jim Levie]

On Tue, 2002-11-19 at 04:34, Jan-Peter Koopmann wrote:
> Hi Julian,
>
> I just discovered something that makes my life a bit more difficult. I
> would love to have a header that tells me whether or not something is
> spam or not. Currently I see things like this:
>
> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam (whitelisted), SpamAssassin (score=7,
>  required 6, AWL, BAD_HELO_WARNING, BIG_FONT, CTYPE_JUST_HTML,
>  EXCUSE_1, HTML_50_70, HTML_COMMENT_UNIQUE_ID, HTML_FONT_COLOR_BLUE,
>  HTML_FONT_COLOR_NOHASH, HTML_FONT_COLOR_RED, HTML_FONT_COLOR_YELLOW,
>  MSG_ID_ADDED_BY_MTA_3, NO_REAL_NAME, SPAM_PHRASE_02_03,
>  SUBJECT_HAS_DATE, WEB_BUGS, X_AUTH_WARNING)
> X-MailScanner-SpamScore: sssssss
>
> or
>
> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: SpamAssassin
> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: spamcop.net
>
> There is no simple rule for Outlook etc. that would allow me to put all
> Spam-Mail in some folder. Currently I would have to put all possible
> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck Messages in the word list. Proposal:

Easy enough to do. You decide what spam score would be spam and filter
on the X-MailScanner-SpamScore header. For example if you decided that
anything wih a spam score of 5 was spam you'd tell Outlook that any
message whose X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: header contained sssss should go
into a Spam folder.
>
> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: spam, whatever (e.g. SpamAssassin or
> spamcop.net etc.)  and
> X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, whatever (e.g. whitelisted)
>
> Moreover: The X-MailScanner-SpamScore should not be in the header if for
> some reason MailScanner determines that the message is not spam. I used
> to have a rule in Outlook that put all messages with
> X-MailScanner-SpamScore: ssssss in the junk mailfolder. As you can see
> in the first example this is not helpful.
>
The MailScanner configuration sets the lower threshold that triggers the
inclusion of the SpamCheck/SpamScore headers. Messages that garner a
SpamAssassin score below that threshold won't trigger the inclusion of
those headers, and thus "aren't spam'.

Because of the nature of the beast, it is quite possible to see messages
with a spam score of 10-12 or less that aren't really spam, depending on
who you get legitimate mail from. Most of the time, in my experience,
anything with a spam score of 8 or more is spam, but I do get some
mailings from legitimate sources that garner a score of 5-7. So you have
to be careful when setting the lower and upper thresholds in
MailScanner. Personally I find it best to set the lower threshold in the
3-5 range and sort out what isn't really spam at the mail client. Along
the same lines I set the high threshold, where we drop messages, in the
12-15 range to reduce the likelyhood of discarding legitimate mail. That
setting gets rid of a large amount of the objectionable and blatant spam
and users can sort through the rest.
--
The instructions said to use Windows 98 or better, so I installed
RedHat.