I am writing this rather long message in hopes that I might get at least one cogent response to a very nagging problem and situation that involved Spam Assassin.
I run a very small toy company, number of employees: 1, and have a website, www.opticaltoys.com that has been hosted by Lunarpages since around 2008. That hosting has been perfect fine and capable with a very ready, helpful and knowledgeable staff of tech support. That is to say I've had no problems with them, or spam, whatsoever until January of this year, when I started getting an inordinate amount of spam in my Inbox. For better or worse, I've come to rely on using webmail (through which Lunarpages supplies SpamAssassin) over a software on my own computer. I have now had three different rounds of complaints/discussions with their tech support about it, (January, May and this past July). During that time the server was rebooted, or my website rebooted, my server changed (just within the past couple of weeks), the filtering score lowered (now at 2.5). None of these things ever had any noticeable effect, but occasionaly, seemingly without any changes made, the spam to the Inbox would decrease to just 1 or a few a day. But the average per day going into the Inbox is between 20 and 30 pieces of spam. Despite the various attempts at fixing the problem by the tech staff and admins at Lunarpages, there has been a repeated "party line" if you will - that they are not responsible for the software, it being both free and common source, and that I am free to read up on it. I have gotten contradictory viewpoints as to the efficacy of Spam Assassin: first being told that if I wanted a better filtering system I could upgrade, by payment, to "MX", as well as being told as late as last week that Spam Assassin is a "superior" filtering software. The latest attempt to fix the problem was in the middle of July when they migrated my whole account to a different server, telling me that different servers "learn" spam in different ways, and that changing it could help matters. Naive as I was, I thought it meant a complete fix. The migration was done, and I waited the allowed time of 24 to 48 hours for its completion. When I was still getting upwards of 30 spam a day in my Inbox I let them know, only to be told that the server had to "learn" more. And that has become the biggest question. (I am also told that I don't have "dkim" on but I have no idea what it is, or where the switch is.) I have asked repeatedly for a reason why two near duplicate pieces of spam, coming in at the same time, one went into the Spam folder, and the other went into the Inbox. This email should not be seen as a complaint about Spam Assassin. Rather I'm simply at a complete loss. All the relevant questions I ask of the tech support at Lunarpages, either go unanswered or are skirted around. For instance a number times, including today, it is pointed out that because my email "a...@opticaltoys.com" is in plain text on my old html site, as well as other sites, it is harvestable and therefore easy spammed. But I have three other emails, all managed by gmail, that are "out there" in text as well and I don't have the problem with spam coming into my Inbox like I do with my Lunarpages account. I have been told that Spam Assassin "learns" what is spam over time. But when I ask the support staff just how that occurs, I get no answer. When I point out that there is no mechanism, such as with Gmail, to "report" something as Spam with a mere click, I get no reply. I am at a loss to understand how Spam Assasin is learning anything. All the spam that is coming in, either to the Inbox or Spam folder, are very similar in style, some of them as I said identical, and many of them selling the same product. But while one goes to the Inbox, another goes to the Spam folder without my understanding why. (Yes, technically the scores are such that would say "this is not spam" but the amount of such spam that Spam Assasin is calling "not spam" is, in my opinion, inordinately high - equal to or greater per day than what is getting called "spam". I would appreciate any insights anyone can offer to me, or for that matter to Lunarpages because I'm not clear that even they understand what is going on, nor how to fix this very nagging problem. Sincerely, Andy
