[PLUG] Spam

Holger Stephan holger at selover.net
Sat Nov 8 17:50:02 UTC 2003


On Sat, 2003-11-08 at 16:02, Michael Rasmussen wrote:
> My problem with spamassassin when I last used it was too many false positives.
> What's your experience there?

Almost none. Mails with score between 5 and 8 are moved into a special
folder to check. It contains app. 5% of all spam. I find a false
positive less than once a month. Everything with a score of over 8 I
never look at. I send out a response telling about a keyword that can be
put into the header to get around the filter. Nobody did this so far. Of
course spammers don't even receive it. 

I almost exclusively receive spam mail on one account that I used as
administrative contact for domain registration. That seems to be
harvested heavily. My private address is only used for direct
correspondence. When I post to newsgroup I use an address that I change
every other month. After an address becomes invalid sendmail will return
an error message that tells about the current one. Again, spammers only
care if it worked on the first shot. 

Lastly, I use dedicated email addresses for eBay and alike. It is just
interesting to see how they are handed around. If the spam level
increases for a given account I change the address with my subscription.
With these dedicated accounts I wouldn't even need SpamAssassin.

I suspect it works like the soups my father used to cook. No recipe and
when one was especially tasty he couldn't tell what he put in. 

Holger





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