On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:24:45 -0500
"Daryl C. W. O'Shea" <spamassas...@dostech.ca> wrote:
> Reputation type rules (such as DNSWLs) are probably the only (or
> certainly one of the very few) types of rules that you can weight
> heavily negatively. This is due to the nature of an open source
> product (or even given enough time to game a closed source product).
> Content based rules are very often easily beaten. If we could have a
> body rule that looks for "this mail is good" and assign a -20 score
> we would. Clearly that would not work.
With the kindest of respect, I have to disagree with this. If for
argument sake five blocklists with no business {or other} relationship
with Spamassassin flag an IP for spamming, then it's a good bet
that they are correct and any perceived negativity is earned. How this
impacts on Spamassassin is dependent on the scores set - which comes
back to you and the developers - so the arguement not only has not
legs, it has no arms either. Consider that blocklists are often
universally trusted to be sat on the SMTP connection level ahead of
Spamassassin, whereas the suggestion of doing that with Habeas as a
whitelist would be pure comedy gold :-)
> Again, find me a commercial white list that wants to be included in
> SpamAssassin on a "free for use basis" and I'll pay for the phone call
> to talk to them. Seriously.
I shake my head in utter disbelief at this comment, and I'm sure that
Apache Sponsor Barracuda AKA 'emailreg.org' will have just pricked up
their ears.
> I'm pretty sure I brought up the SA developers' *long* standing
> principle of being as safe as possible for the majority of users by
> erring on the side of missing spam rather than tagging ham while still
> putting out a useful product.
It's a fair statement that in using an Antispam 'product' that blocks
nothing and only assigns a score, the issue of having that score
reduced in favour of a known commercial bulk mailer is undesirable.
The statistics may have some interest but can be applied to show there
is little cause to keep the rule at all if you so wish to bend it the
other way. The key is this: I would *never* have known what HABEAS was
if I had not seen the name in low scoring spam and asked why. It does
not look like I'm the first to ask either.
>
> From the data we have from mass-checks we are erring a very small
> amount on the side of caution by not disabling the whitelists by
> default.
It's a big fat favourable score to one organisation for 'erring a very
small amount on the side of caution' don't you think? -4/-8 given the
average 419 spam only scores 4-8 points. Forgive me but are Return Path
pulling someones strings here as Puppet Masters?
If everything is open and transparent give the default user the option
to *enable* them and score them zero, unless - of course - there is
some kind of logical reason for these mad scoring spam assisting rules
that favour Return Path in the default set up?
--
This e-mail and any attachments may form pure opinion and may not have
any factual foundation. Please check any details provided to satisfy
yourself as to suitability or accuracy of any information provided.
Data Protection: Unless otherwise requested we may pass the information
you have provided to other partner organisations.
