Re: [exim] Estimating spam deliveries

Ian Eiloart wrote:

>> | Does anyone know a good way of estimating how much spam is being
>> | delivered to mailboxes?
>>
>> Ask a sample of users to count or estimate how many spams they get
>> e.g per week ?
>
> Well, I don't want to rely on users. The reporting will be biased according
> to how busy they are. Anyway, I can see their mailboxes and count them
> myself, with much more reliable random sampling. I could even copy a random
> sample to another mailbox.
>
> I really don't want to do that though. I was hoping someone might be able
> to point me at a statistical technique that I can apply through correlating
> deliveries and rejections, without examining individual messages.

The spam that got through your filters, is spam that couldn't be
identified as such automatically. So human manual intervention is
required. Either your users manually flag the email up as spam, or you do.

If you're looking for a magic equation along the lines of:

spams that got through = attempted deliveries / rejections * x

You wont find one. "x" will be wildly different for different
people/systems.

Why not set it up so that your users all have a, "Report Spam," folder
or something, where they can drag spam email into for you to process?

Even if you don't get an accurate figure, the trend it's self might be
useful.

Mike