What is the best High SpamAssassin Score

[Drew Marshall]

Having only just realised that by running the latest stable SA I have
automatic Bayes, I am just starting to play. So how do I change the
autolearn thresholds? I am very lucky with the amount of spam that hits
the server (Postfix does some RBL at SMTP stage) but I have just enabled a
couple of addresses that I used to use with Usenet which are being
contantly spammed so I can get bayes to autolearn. Off the back of that I
read last week that bayes wants 200 messages before it will start
'processing'. Now is that just 200 messages, in my instance autolearnt or
do I also have to find it 200 ham messages? If so does it matter what or
can I just pick 200 legitimate messages and feed the hungry beast?

Drew (Feeling stupid this morning)

Randal, Phil said:
> My threshold is 4.75 for low, 10.25 for high, autolearning at 9, with
> loads
> of rules, razor, pyzor, dcc.  Bayes has been well-trained.
>
> A couple of spammers have tried to send us spam in batches of 100+ at a
> time, so they've been blacklisted.
>
> I found one (disputable) false positive in that high range in the last 3
> months.
>
> We still get a few false negatives, but new rules and Bayes usually catch
> them.
>
> Now, if ownly we could persuade our users not to subscriber to spammers'
> mailing lists.  You know the ones, special deals and offers lists, nothing
> to do with work at all, and indistinguishable from the unsolicited stuff
> :-(
> Grrrrr.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Phil
> ---------------------------------------------
> Phil Randal
> Network Engineer
> Herefordshire Council
> Hereford, UK
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
>> Behalf Of Chris Yuzik
>> Sent: 22 February 2004 16:35
>> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>> Subject: Re: What is the best High SpamAssassin Score
>>
>>
>> Stuart Clark wrote:
>>
>> >What is the best High SpamAssassin Score?
>> >
>> >Without getting complaints from customers
>> >
>> Stuart,
>>
>> Unfortunately, the answer is not that simple--the "best" score depends
>> on a number of factors. Spamassassin has quite a few options
>> and can be
>> tweaked like crazy. If you have Bayes running, that can increase the
>> score of spam. Also, DCC and Razor are great too. Perhaps even more
>> significantly, if you have added any additional rule sets, such as
>> BigEvil.cf, you catch more spam and will increase the scores
>> of spam as
>> well. (get it and others from
>> http://www.merchantsoverseas.com/wwwroot/gorilla/sa_rules.htm)
> . It also
> depends on what you're going to do with your high spam--are you just
> tagging it and delivering it too? Or, if are you deleting it altogether,
> in which case you would want to be a bit more catious.
>
> On my server, I have bayes, Razor, and DCC running along with with a few
> custom rulesets. I am also using BigEvil.cf, popcorn.cf, weeds.cf, and a
> few others that I cannot remember right now.
>
> My thresholds are 5 points for spam and 15 points for high spam. I
> deliver spam as an attachment, but quarantine high spam for a couple of
> weeks; the user doesn't receive any notification of high-spam.
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>


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