On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 12:40 +0000, Paul Houselander wrote: > Hi > > Bit of an unusal question but ive been getting increasing questions of > why spamassasin didnt classify an email as spam. > > When I look at the mail its normally an opt-in mailing list of some kind > and therefore spamassasin is correct in not classifying it as spam. > There are a number of persistent commercial spammers (usually American, e.g the Bonnier Corporation) that disguise their spam as newsletters and have an 'unsubscribe' URL that doesn't do anything except, probably, validate addresses on their spamming list. Then there are other homegrown menaces, e.g. BT and its spammer^h^h^h^h^h^h^h advertiser tractionplatform.com, that also ignore unsubscribe URLs or don't provide them but, at least don't try make their junk look like newsletters.
If asking to be unsubscribed doesn't work or the option isn't provided I simply add their URLs to a private blacklist. This is implemented as an SA rule that adds a large enough score to deep-six the mail immediately. Where they use a different mail address for spam, I just add that since they are often outfits I'll use again in future, but just don't need the UCE stream from them. Ebuyer is a recent offender of this type. I've noticed a rise in UCE recently, often from online shops I've bought something from and that didn't have a check-box for newsletter acceptance, sometimes because I first used them a very long time ago. HTH Martin
