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List:       focus-virus
Subject:    Re: spoofed source addresses
From:       lupe () lupe-christoph ! de (Lupe Christoph)
Date:       2002-08-08 6:24:01
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On Wednesday, 2002-08-07 at 14:13:32 -0400, Randy Westcott wrote:
>     Our experience with Spam Assassin is that it is about 90% effective.  I
> have seen very few false positives.  That is, legitimate mail that is
> identified as spam.  If you receive 100 pieces of junk mail per week about
> 10 will end up in your mailbox because the score did not reach spam level.
> We have set the spam level a little higher than the default to keep down the
> number of false positives.  This gives us a little spam but that is
> something we can live with.

It's much more effective for me. Maybe 1%~2% false negatives, and less
than 5% false postives. The false positives will diminish over time
if you use the auto-whitelist feature.

Most false positives are either people sending normal mail through
Spam relays, or idiotic announcements like Sun ONE's that are written
by Spam writers, i.e. they look like Spam, but I would still like
to see them, even though it takes a lot of time to find content.

>     We do not have any problem with sending messages back to anybody since
> that feature is not active.  Why let the junk mailers know that you actually
> exist?  The spam ought to fall into the bit bucket or into a folder you can
> check for the occasional legitimate mail.  The rule set is almost stock with
> a few tweaks and some additions to the whitelist.

AFAIK, Spamassassin can't reply to mail. That would be asinine (ouch),
wouldn't it?

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "BRAD GRIFFIN" <b.griffin@cqu.edu.au>
> To: <focus-virus@securityfocus.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 7:17 PM
> Subject: Re: spoofed source addresses

> > All idiocy aside, your idea has already been implemented in a product that
> is causing headaches all over the planet. Spam Assassin works on a points
> based system (see link). Of course, with the default ruleset, 99% of your
> mail will be flagged as malicious or spam and you'll be sending hundreds of

If 99% of somebody's mail is flagged as Spam by Spamassassin, he's a
Spammer alright!

Lupe Christoph
-- 
| lupe@lupe-christoph.de       |           http://www.lupe-christoph.de/ |
| I have challenged the entire ISO-9000 quality assurance team to a      |
| Bat-Leth contest on the holodeck. They will not concern us again.      |
| http://public.logica.com/~stepneys/joke/klingon.htm                    |
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