I know I've seen this somewhere, but I've failed miserably finding it. Where is the doc on what test does what?
I received an email that's ham, but scored very high (4.0). I want to write up the reasons and suggest changes. I need to know what each test is really testing. For the Editorially inclined, you might critique my start on this note. Dan ref: My Note (very incomplete). Your email invoices look tremendously like spam. You should really address some of these issues to avoid anti-spam software misclassifying your invoices as spam. The current invoice just barely made it through my mostly all defaults, SpamAssassin filter. The tests triggered totaled a score of 4.0. A score of 5.0 would have caused me never to even see the email! Please forward this to the appropriate department. All of these triggers can be easily addressed by correcting the software which produces the email. I'd be happy to assist (after all, my profession is helping clients with tasks like this) but you may have the in-house expertise to do it, or there may be a third-party vendor you can demand repair their product. Dan Barker, President Software Projects, Inc. Each section below consists of the Test Failed Name, the Score with network tests, the Score without network tests in parentheses and my comments. SUBJ_HAS_SPACES 1.175 (1.899) There are 30 spaces between the main subject and the "serial number" part. These spaces are used by spammers to "hide" the end of the subject from users (bacause it's too far to the right). Just don't do it (either don't put in the spaces, or don't add the serial number. The left part of the subject already has a serial number so why use two? Also, the email says you can't reply, so why have a serial number at all? Putting identifying data in the body would suffice for Customer Service issues. SUBJ_HAS_UNIQ_ID 1.339 (1.809) Another Spammer trick, so they can track their results. You have no such need. See the notes above for SUBJ_HAS_SPACES. HTML_20_30 0.226 (0.567). HTML 20 to 30% of the body. There's not a lot you can do about this, so minimize the scores on the items on which you CAN have a positive effect. HTML_TEXT_AFTER_BODY 0.061 (0.752). Again, without the network tests this score escallates to 0.752. This really should be fixed. It's simply incorrect HTML in the email body. HTML_TEXT_AFTER_HTML 0.031 (0.032) MIME_HTML_ONLY 0.177 (1.156) NO_REAL_NAME 0.007 (0.336) BAYES_50 0.001 (1.567). There's nothing much that you can do about this. You have lot's of spammy words in the email, but I think they are necessary. If the network tests were disabled (SPF, DNS Blacklists, etc., this score would have been 1.567 - a FAR larger contribution to the total. HTML_MESSAGE 0.001 (0.001). This score is in place simply to allow the results of the test to appear in the headers. It's value is low enough that it won't contribute to the total very much. In a very high-traffic installation, a mail administrator might choose to disable the network tests for SPF records, DNS Blacklists, etc., for performance reasons. In an installation like that, with the default SpamAssassin scores, your invoice would have scored 7.667 - Definately Spam. The most highly scored failures, are trivial to fix. Headers (after SpamAssassin Processing): <snip> Body: <snip>
