Porn msg identification?

[Richard D Alloway]

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Mariano Absatz wrote:

> Hi Rich,
> 
> The point is that MailScanner doesn't know anything about scoring messages... 
> the spam score you see in MailScanner is actually done by the SpamAssassin 
> library that MailScanner optionally uses.

This is, of course, quite true :)

The reason I was suggesting it be part of MailScanner is the fact that
MailScanner takes the output of SpamAssassin and modifies the subject
and/or adds a header to the message.
 
> Now, _that_ library, including the rules that come with it, is developed and 
> optimized to tag as much spam as possible _avoiding_ as many false positives 
> as it can.

Well, I'm not necessarily looking to detect spam... legitimate email with
mature content might not be spam. :)
 
> Thus, SpamAssassin scans the message looking for patterns and it adds or 
> substracts from the score as some conditions are met or not...

Which is the same functionality I'd be looking for in a word/phrase
detection routine, but with a seperate set of actions from the spam
portion.
 
> You _could_ create a different set of rules for SpamAssassin and invoke it 
> twice, once for spam detection and the other for "adulthood" detection, but 
> that would imply at least modifying MailScanner and using a secondary set of 
> SpamAssassin rules... it _will_ require some time and an effort to do it...

It seems I may be one of the very few actually looking for this type of
feature...perhaps I will have to throw on the ol' coding hat for a while
:)

Julian, if I am (or anybody else is) able to create a relatively
lightweight way of adding this feature to MailScanner, would you consider
adding it to the production version?  

Thanks again for everyone's feedback!

-Rich
 
> El 8 Apr 2003 a las 13:10, Richard D Alloway escribió:
> 
> > Thanks for everyone's input for my problem, but I think the goal I am
> > trying to work towards is being lost in translation :)
> > 
> > What I think would be a great feature is to allow custom rulesets.  The
> > more I think about it, the more I think being able to create a customer
> > header for the custom ruleset would be the way to go.
> > 
> > I imagine it working just like the Spam Score Header.
> > 
> > Based on the score from the ruleset file (in my case, I'd create an adult
> > language file) with scores per word, a custom header could be created
> > which shows the "severity" of the language:
> > 
> > Custom Score Header = X-MailScanner-Maturity:
> > 
> > Custom Score Header = A
> > 
> > Custom Score Ruleset = /etc/MailScanner/rules/Maturity.rules
> > 
> > /etc/MailScanner/rules/Maturity.rules could contain:
> > frick   1
> > frack   5
> > 
> > Then, a message which contains the word 'frick' 3 times and 'frack' once
> > would have a score of 8, so a header of:
> > X-MailScanner-Maturity = AAAAAAAA
> > 
> > A customer who wishes to never receive emails with any of the words in the
> > list can filter on the X-MailScanner-Maturity header containing 'A'.
> > 
> > A customer who wishes to receive mildly mature emails can filter on the
> > X-MailScanner-Maturity header containing 'AAAA', and so on...
> > 
> > This way, the email is delivered to the customer and the customer has the
> > option of deleting, moving to another folder, or doing nothing with the
> > email.
> > 
> > The reason I can't use the high score action, etc is that we delete spam
> > with a high score.
> > 
> > As an ISP, we do not force adult/mature content filtering on our
> > customers, but would like to offer a solution that empowers the end user
> > to decide the level of filtering.
> > 
> > Thanks for hearing me out...again :)
> > 
> > -Rich
> > 
> > On Tue, 8 Apr 2003, Julian Field wrote:
> > 
> > > At 01:48 08/04/2003, you wrote:
> > > >Hmmm...  I don't think that will satisfy my customers.
> > > >
> > > >The problem is the language as well as the images contained within porn
> > > >spam.
> > > >
> > > >The issue with setting the scores very high is that some customers will
> > > >want to receive "adult" emails while others don't want to receive any.
> > >
> > > Which is why you can set the spam high score using a ruleset so that
> > > different users get different scoring thresholds.
> > >
> > > >If there was a generic way to build a ruleset to modify the subject line
> > > >(or add/modify a header), that would probably take care of it! :)
> > > >
> > > >Any chance something like this could be in MailScanner's future? *hint
> > > >hint*  ;)
> > > >
> > > >-Rich
> > > >
> > > >On Mon, 7 Apr 2003, Julian Field wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > The problem of nasty porn spam can largely be solved with the "striphtml"
> > > > > spam action, as it removes all images from spam. In case it's not really
> > > > > spam, all the links in the message are maintained, but you don't have to
> > > > > suffer the images. This is keeping most of my users happy here.
> > > > >
> > > > > At 18:10 07/04/2003, you wrote:
> > > > > >Hi there!
> > > > > >
> > > > > >I was wondering if anyone had come up with a way to add a header or
> > > > > >perhaps prepend the subject line with something like {Porn?} based on the
> > > > > >language/content of an email?
> > > > > >
> > > > > >I want to be able to give our users something they can filter their mail
> > > > > >against if they don't want to receive ANY adult messages.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >Our customers like the ability to filter against {Spam?} in the subject
> > > > > >line for possible spam.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >Thanks!
> > > > > >
> > > > > >-Rich
> 
> --
> Mariano Absatz
> El Baby
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
>         -- Woody Allen
>