Spam Actions

[Julian Field]

At 18:40 11/09/2002, you wrote:
>Are you saying that an SA result and an RBL result will simply be
>treated as "spam" w/respect to bounces? Or can one specify one action
>for an RBL result and a different one for an SA result? In my opinion
>the later is what is needed to be able to notify users of why their
>message wasn't delivered.

Done.

>I've deployed a number of instances of MailScanner. In all cases so far
>the client, when told of the configuration choices, has elected to never
>produce bounces for SA or virus results to the Internet at large. They
>all elect to have local users notified about virus infections.
>Furthermore, all but one of the clients uses MailScanner in a "primarily
>advisory role" w/respect to spam. In that configuration MailScanner has
>a HighScore set somewhere at 15 or more (and discards those matches).
>The SA "required" is usually set down around 3 or 4. It then becomes the
>client responsibility for disposition of messages marked as being spam.
>Per-user filtering of the resultant stream is then done server-side with
>either Cyrus Sieve or procmail filters or client-side with whatever the
>client supports for filters. To make filtering easier I've developed a
>modification for MailScanner the does something along the lines of what
>MimeDefang does. My mod causes the spamheader to have "(###...) at the
>beginning followed by the normal spamheader. There's a "#" for each
>integer part of the SA score (a score of 6.2 results in (######), up to
>20 "#". The Sieve, procmail, or client filter can then do "if (######"
>discard. That's much easier than picking out score from the spam header.
>So, for my clients having a single action for "spam" (either from RBL or
>SA) isn't a good option.

I chose "*" rather than "#", but done. And no, I'm not going to bother
adding a config option just to set the character. I'm sure you can cope
with "*" :-)

>I don't know about others, but without exception all of these clients
>have been very opposed to any modification of the subject header.
>
>Yes, I could set up the MTA to do the RBL checks. But that's not very
>flexible and it's hard to "white list" someone that you really need mail
>from and whose ISP or organization has become black listed.

I appreciate your feature request, but could you possibly word them a
little more gently? Remember I do this for nothing, I'm not some mega-corp
you can make demands of. Hope you understand.

Jules
--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ