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List:       spamassassin-users
Subject:    Re: SpamAssassin interest and Spam solution
From:       SM <sm () resistor ! net>
Date:       2008-03-28 16:57:36
Message-ID: 6.2.5.6.2.20080328094205.02e368a0 () resistor ! net
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Hi Richard,
At 08:42 27-03-2008, Richard Hole wrote:
>I am interested in spam filtering software that I could encourage 
>either my server or other servers to use. My server currently uses 
>SpamAssassin and I hope your software
>could be easily modified to do what I suggest below. I want to 
>receive my emails reliably without having genuine emails being 
>blocked and never seen by me due to spam filters. Filters are good 
>provided I can view the filtered emails in case a genuine email is 
>filtered. I do NOT want the software to change the subject of a 
>possible spam email in case a genuine email is labeled "SPAM" in the 
>subject. This would make sorting mail difficult because I do not 
>know how to remove the "SPAM" tags in the subject line.

SpamAssassin does content filtering.  You pass a message to it and it 
runs a bunch of tests and assigns a score to the message.  It's up to 
you to decide what to do with the message.

SpamAssassin can add headers and rewrite the Subject line.  If you 
don't want the Subject line rewritten, don't use the rewrite_header 
Subject setting.

>It would be good if the email could be set up so that the likely 
>spam emails are directed into another folder on the web based email 
>instead of being completely blocked. That way

You can configure your filter to either reject messages above the 
score threshold or with a spam status of "Yes", or redirect the 
message to a different mailbox or folder.  It's up to your filter 
(procmail, milter, etc.) to do that.

>I have also thought of a way that could help reduce spam and avoid 
>the problem of legitimate emails being blocked. It could be an idea 
>to share this idea with other servers or Internet service providers 
>associations around the world so this could be adopted. What could 
>be done is that software could be set up on the servers so that an 
>email will never be blocked if it has a certain code in the subject 
>of the email. A three letter lower case code would be good as it 
>would be easy to type. If an email does not have the code it could 
>still get through. However, it would run the risk of being blocked 
>by spam filters. The filters or spam blockers could be set up so 
>that all emails with the code are allowed through unless the email 
>user wants to blacklist a particular address.
>
>When two people communicate via email they would not have to type 
>each others code every time they reply as the code should 
>automatically appear in the subject field of the new message. If two 
>people are communicating, each of their codes could appear in the 
>subject field of the email. For example:
>"Re: Interest in your product. zkl fvr"

You can add a rule to test the Subject header for that "code" and 
assign a negative score for the above.  This only works with other 
antispam software if they allow the user to customize the 
configuration by adding such rules.

Regards,
-sm 

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