Re: [MlMt] How is span score computed?

2024-09-26 Thread Bill Cole

On 2024-09-26 at 09:47:21 UTC-0400 (Thu, 26 Sep 2024 09:47:21 -0400)
William Allen 
is rumored to have said:

I subscribe to my local newspaper’s daily bulletin. Recently I 
noticed I wasn’t getting it anymore and after looking a the junk 
folder saw it had a spam score of 4.0. Just looking at the mailings I 
can’t see any difference. Is there any way to understand what is 
triggering a score for a particular piece of mail? Likewise, is there 
a way to override the filter for a particular sender?


MailMate itself does not score messages. The scores it can detect are 
those determined either by SpamSieve locally or by your email provider's 
spam filters. Without knowing which is relevant in your case, it isn't 
possible to say how to adjust it. So if you have installed SpamSieve, 
consult its documentation for how to adjust its scoring. If you haven't 
installed SpamSieve, the score is being added by your mailbox provider 
and you should ask them what adjustments are available.


SOME (not all) mailbox providers claim that by removing the $Junk flag 
and/or adding a $NotJunk flag and/or moving mail from a "Junk" or "Spam" 
mailbox to the INBOX will be noticed by their filter maintenance systems 
and lead to future similar messages no0t being marked as spam. SOME also 
claim that if you add the sender to an address book linked to their mail 
system (such as Google, iCloud, or Exchange Online/MS365) it will 
prevent future mail from being labeled Spam.


[Puts on Apache SpamAssassin maintainer hat for the following tangent]

One of the most common free and open-source toolkits included by mail 
providers as a part of their spam filters is SpamAssassin, maintained by 
the Apache Software Foundation. Anyone can use SpamAssassin and modify 
it however they like. It is sometimes useful to use a SpamAssassin scan 
to figure out what may be considered spam by systems that use it *and* 
by other tools that use similar scanning approaches. If you're 
comfortable working with command line tools and understand how to setup 
a Perl runtime environment (probably with MacPorts or Homebrew) it can 
be useful to install SpamAssassin and use it to answer such questions as 
"why was this marked as spam?"


Unfortunately, the most easily findable website offering the general 
public SpamAssassin scans is miserably misconfigured and misleading. If 
you do find and use it or any similar tool online, you should understand 
that any spam filtering  requires site-specific information to work 
well, so public scanners are always going to make mistakes based on 
their lack of knowledge. I don't link to public scanners because they 
have that innate flaw, but some people find them helpful.



--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo@toad.social and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
addresses)

Not Currently Available For Hire
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[MlMt] How is span score computed?

2024-09-26 Thread William Allen
I subscribe to my local newspaper’s daily bulletin. Recently I noticed I wasn’t 
getting it anymore and after looking a the junk folder saw it had a spam score 
of 4.0. Just looking at the mailings I can’t see any difference. Is there any 
way to understand what is triggering a score for a particular piece of mail? 
Likewise, is there a way to override the filter for a particular sender?
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Re: [MlMt] How is span score computed?

2024-09-26 Thread William Allen

Thanks! That was very informative and helpful.

Regards,
Bill

On 26 Sep 2024, at 11:09, Bill Cole wrote:


On 2024-09-26 at 09:47:21 UTC-0400 (Thu, 26 Sep 2024 09:47:21 -0400)
William Allen 
is rumored to have said:

I subscribe to my local newspaper’s daily bulletin. Recently I 
noticed I wasn’t getting it anymore and after looking a the junk 
folder saw it had a spam score of 4.0. Just looking at the mailings I 
can’t see any difference. Is there any way to understand what is 
triggering a score for a particular piece of mail? Likewise, is there 
a way to override the filter for a particular sender?


MailMate itself does not score messages. The scores it can detect are 
those determined either by SpamSieve locally or by your email 
provider's spam filters. Without knowing which is relevant in your 
case, it isn't possible to say how to adjust it. So if you have 
installed SpamSieve, consult its documentation for how to adjust its 
scoring. If you haven't installed SpamSieve, the score is being added 
by your mailbox provider and you should ask them what adjustments are 
available.


SOME (not all) mailbox providers claim that by removing the $Junk flag 
and/or adding a $NotJunk flag and/or moving mail from a "Junk" or 
"Spam" mailbox to the INBOX will be noticed by their filter 
maintenance systems and lead to future similar messages no0t being 
marked as spam. SOME also claim that if you add the sender to an 
address book linked to their mail system (such as Google, iCloud, or 
Exchange Online/MS365) it will prevent future mail from being labeled 
Spam.


[Puts on Apache SpamAssassin maintainer hat for the following tangent]

One of the most common free and open-source toolkits included by mail 
providers as a part of their spam filters is SpamAssassin, maintained 
by the Apache Software Foundation. Anyone can use SpamAssassin and 
modify it however they like. It is sometimes useful to use a 
SpamAssassin scan to figure out what may be considered spam by systems 
that use it *and* by other tools that use similar scanning approaches. 
If you're comfortable working with command line tools and understand 
how to setup a Perl runtime environment (probably with MacPorts or 
Homebrew) it can be useful to install SpamAssassin and use it to 
answer such questions as "why was this marked as spam?"


Unfortunately, the most easily findable website offering the general 
public SpamAssassin scans is miserably misconfigured and misleading. 
If you do find and use it or any similar tool online, you should 
understand that any spam filtering  requires site-specific information 
to work well, so public scanners are always going to make mistakes 
based on their lack of knowledge. I don't link to public scanners 
because they have that innate flaw, but some people find them helpful.



--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo@toad.social and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
addresses)

Not Currently Available For Hire



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Re: [MlMt] How is span score computed?

2024-09-26 Thread Randall Gellens

On 26 Sep 2024, at 8:09, Bill Cole wrote:

MailMate itself does not score messages. The scores it can detect are 
those determined either by SpamSieve locally or by your email 
provider's spam filters. Without knowing which is relevant in your 
case, it isn't possible to say how to adjust it. So if you have 
installed SpamSieve, consult its documentation for how to adjust its 
scoring. If you haven't installed SpamSieve, the score is being added 
by your mailbox provider and you should ask them what adjustments are 
available.


How does an email provider mark their spam score? Is there a header 
field that they use that MailMate recognizes?


--Randall
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Re: [MlMt] How is span score computed?

2024-09-26 Thread Randall Gellens

On 26 Sep 2024, at 14:26, Bill Cole wrote:

Yes. I believe MM recognizes various headers generated by different 
tools. I believe X-Spam-Score and X-Spam-Status (both optionally added 
by SpamAssassin) are both recognized, and possibly the X-less 
equivalents


The X- prefix was deprecated last century. Sad it's still being used for 
new header fields. Sad that we don't have a single standard header field 
for conveying server-side spam scores.


--Randall
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Re: [MlMt] How is span score computed?

2024-09-26 Thread Bill Cole

On 2024-09-26 at 17:13:46 UTC-0400 (Thu, 26 Sep 2024 14:13:46 -0700)
Randall Gellens 
is rumored to have said:


On 26 Sep 2024, at 8:09, Bill Cole wrote:

MailMate itself does not score messages. The scores it can detect are 
those determined either by SpamSieve locally or by your email 
provider's spam filters. Without knowing which is relevant in your 
case, it isn't possible to say how to adjust it. So if you have 
installed SpamSieve, consult its documentation for how to adjust its 
scoring. If you haven't installed SpamSieve, the score is being added 
by your mailbox provider and you should ask them what adjustments are 
available.


How does an email provider mark their spam score? Is there a header 
field that they use that MailMate recognizes?


Yes. I believe MM recognizes various headers generated by different 
tools. I believe X-Spam-Score and X-Spam-Status (both optionally added 
by SpamAssassin) are both recognized, and possibly the X-less 
equivalents



--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo@toad.social and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
addresses)

Not Currently Available For Hire
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