Spam score is negative, yet message is still marked as spam

[Anthony Peacock]

Hi,

Jonathan B Bayer wrote:
> Hello mailscanner,
> 
> Hello all.
> 
> I have a new installation of MailScanner installed on a new mail
> server.  The basic configuration is:
> 
> RedHat Enterprise 3
> Postfix 2.1.3
> Mailscanner 4.58.9-1
> 
> One of the users has been sending messages to the company president.
> These messages are being marked as spam and moved to the spam folder.
> 
> However, when I examined the message headers, I found the following:
> 
> X-*****************_com-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information
> X-*****************_com-MailScanner: Found to be clean
> X-*****************_com-MailScanner-SpamCheck: spam, spamhaus-ZEN,
                                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^

This mail hit the spamhaus-ZEN RBL, and you have MailScanner configured 
to mark as spam any message that hits on your RBLs.


Personally I don't have MailScanner set to check any RBLs, I use the 
scoring features on SpamAssassin for that.



>  SpamAssassin (not cached, score=-4.17, required 6,
>  autolearn=not spam, ALL_TRUSTED -1.80, BAYES_00 -2.60,
>  HTML_MESSAGE 0.00, HTML_TAG_BALANCE_BODY 0.23)
> X-*****************_com-MailScanner-From: dmakhijani@*****************.com
> X-Spam-Status: Yes
> 
> 
> and the subject had the {Spam?}  inserted.
> 
> Why would this be marked as spam, if the score is -4.17 ?
> 
> What's even stranger is that the user's computer connects directly
> with the mail server to send the email, so it isn't even going through
> another relay.
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> 
> JBB
> ---
> Superior solutions for small business, home office and home users
> 
> Jonathan B Bayer,CEO           mailto:jbayer at BayerTechnologyGroup.com
> Bayer Technology Group         Work: (609) 632-1200
> 23 Exeter Rd.                  Mobile: (609) 658-9408
> East Windsor, NJ 08520
> 


-- 
Anthony Peacock
CHIME, Royal Free & University College Medical School
WWW:    http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk/~rmhiajp/
"If you have an apple and I have  an apple and we  exchange apples
then you and I will still each have  one apple. But  if you have an
idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us
will have two ideas." -- George Bernard Shaw