Webmaster wrote: > A large number of our clients are using POP. > If I were to ask them to send false negatives to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > and false positives to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so I can place them in > a folder and train, does that hinder the training process in > anyway knowing that the header info is changed with the > forwarding process. >
Yes...Forwards are more-or-less completely unusable for training purposes. However, you might be able to get "forward as attachment" to work, if your mail client supports it. The problem with forwards is twofold. First, the headers are completely destroyed. This is a major problem for SpamAssassin's bayes engine, which studies headers. Second, not only the header info is changed.. The body gets completely redone. Mail clients typically add text to the top, and then re-encode the body text all over. If the orignal was base-64 encoded, the forward may not be. If the original was multipart/alternative with text/plain and a text/html, the forward might drop the text/plain, and create a new one based on the content of the text/html section. As far as spam tools are concerned, these messages bear little resemblance to one another.
