Re: [exim] exiscan, spamassassin, and per-domain bayes datab…

Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Steve Lamb
Date:  
To: Exim Users List
Subject: Re: [exim] exiscan, spamassassin, and per-domain bayes database
Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote:
> At least a good portion is sent so widely that one user's spam is similar
> to another users spam.


    True, but you're forgetting that there are two sets to each user.  Spam
and ham.  While spam is generally going ot be a constant across users the
likelihood of ham being constant is not.


    Simplest example that I can provide is myself and my father.  Both our
accounts are hosted on my machine.  His account(s) deal largely with FAA
buddies, fellow Taurus SHO drivers, eBay auction notices and foriegn exchange
student placement/issues.  Meanwhile my mail is mainly concerned with Debian,
Exim, job searches, OpenRPG and soon (maybe) long distance motorcycle riding.


    Because of the global bayes DB his eBay auction notices are scored as ham
which, in turn, lower the spam score of eBay/Paypal phishing spam to me.
Without that global DB eBay would be a dead give-away spam marker.  As it is
it's middle of the road because he gets far more auction notices than I do
phishing spam.  Of course the corillary to this is that if I got a lot more of
eBay/Paypal phishing spam than he did notices he wouldn't get notices as my
system would reject them based on my score.


    That's just 2 people, 2 accounts, and maybe 400 messages a day between
them.  I put up with it because trying to get my dad to switch to Thunderbird
has been worse than trying to pull teeth from a mule.  Because of this I can't
set up something simple for him to train ham/spam on his side so it would take
his DB for-ev-er to block anything.  I let him (and about 6-7 other people)
piggy back off my account's db so they do have some protection against the
latest and greatest spam and just put up with the minor variance that lets
things through from time to time.


-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
       PGP Key: 8B6E99C5       | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------