On 19 Feb 2002, Craig Hughes wrote: > This system has a number of advantages over the simple counting method > of the old AWL implementation: > > 1. Spammers before could just send you 3 "clean" messages and thereby > get themselves permanently obtaining a -100 bonus. Now they would have > to keep restocking their spamming addresses by sending dummy messages to > keep their mean low. And if their mean were, say, 1 long-term, any > message they sent scoring >=9 would count as spam anyway. > 2. Spammers could use a "well-known good" address which they reasonably > guess to be whitelisted (think from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]) and get > the -100 bonus. Now, they can of course still use some well-known good > address, but the bonus obtained will be far lower. > 3. The AWL not operates automatically as an auto-blacklist too! If you > generally receive spammy mails from a particular address, then the > scores will be pulled toward the spammy mean, *raising* their score if > the spammer happens to send you a less-spammy message.
I'm not sure this is yet the best implementation possible. I'm having difficulty putting into words why yet, but I'm thinking about the general case where we initially *don't* catch spammers, and then add a rule so that we do catch them. We need to think about what are the chances their score will be bumped below the threshold by the AWL? I almost think it should be some sort of inverse logarithmic scale - if the AWL average score is zero, reduce the spam score by more than you would if the average AWL score is say 3. But overall I'm not yet convinced AWL on *received* mails is a good idea (my code here AWL's based on *sent* mail, but it's outside of spamassassin, obviously). -- Matt. <:->get a SMart net</:-> ________________________________________________________________________ This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star Internet. The service is powered by MessageLabs. For more information on a proactive anti-virus service working around the clock, around the globe, visit: http://www.star.net.uk ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
