[PLUG] Next steps in Bayian SpamAssassin installation

[Steve Bonds]

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Rich Shepard rshepard-at-appl-ecosys.com |PDX Linux| wrote:

> What are the following steps I need to take in order to train the Bayes
> filter (I suppose I can use some of my saved message files for that) and
> get the rest of the installation completed?

I wouldn't bother.  I've had very poor luck with the Bayes filter in
spamassassin.  Even after training it for months I found that the
spamassassin settings resulted in more messages getting through because
the Bayes algorithm thought they weren't spam than if I weren't using
Bayes at all.  The spammers are on to the Bayes approach and inject random
junk into their spams to defeat them.

I still use Bayes, but it will never reduce the spam score any more, it
will only increase it.  This can be controlled in your
.spamassassin/user_prefs file by adding these lines:

score BAYES_00 0.0
score BAYES_01 0.0
score BAYES_10 0.0
score BAYES_20 0.0
score BAYES_30 0.0
score BAYES_40 0.0
score BAYES_44 0.0
score BAYES_50 0.0

Here are some statistics on spam and Bayes from a local public-access UNIX
admin:

http://www.rdrop.com/spam/

  -- Steve