Unexpected whitelisting behaviour

[Quentin Campbell]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Julian Field [mailto:mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK] 
>Sent: 11 December 2003 13:48
>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Unexpected whitelisting behaviour
>

I said that: 

>>However I noticed that the message headers did not contain the usual
>>
>>  X-Newcastle-MailScanner-SpamScore: ss...
>
and Julian replied:

That will only happen if MS thinks it is spam.

------------------------------------------------

Julian

At the cost of sounding a little dense could I ask you to please explain
what you mean by that statement? Surely MS only thinks a message is
"spam" if the spam score exceeds the SA threshold, currently 5.0 at this
site, or the sender is in one of the RBL sites specified in the MS
config file?

Why, then, do I see most messages that have a spam score less than 5
(ie. Not spam) showing a "X-Newcastle-MailScanner-SpamScore:" header
with 1 to 4 "s" characters?

Are you saying that the message in question must have had a spam score
less than or equal to zero or less than the -2.0 used by the Bayes
auto-learn as the "ham" threshold?

Quentin
---
PHONE: +44 191 222 8209    Information Systems and Services (ISS),
                           University of Newcastle,
                           Newcastle upon Tyne,
FAX:   +44 191 222 8765    United Kingdom, NE1 7RU.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Any opinion expressed above is mine. The University can get its own."