* This is the modus mailing list *

As a beta tester I don't remember anyone reporting a false positive problem
in the 'normal' setting. Are You saying that you are willing to deal with
false-positives generated by SA, but not by the SCA engine? I think you may
be reading to much gloom and doom into the reports of false positives in
total. While I haven't run my server in the 'normal' mode at all, I can
hardly expect it would increase my false-positive level since my default is
'extreme'. And yes, I used to run SA as well but no longer. False positives
are going to occur anytime the engine, whether it is SA or SCA begins to try
and determine if an images only html message (the prefered porn spam format,
and that of folks sending pictures of grandkids) are spam or not. Our
customers prefer to have the porn in the quarantine as they have had enough
inter-species sex education for their lifetime now. They use the whitelist
the first time they find a problem with their kids and all is well. The
alternative on either engine is to allow an entire class of spam the
opportunity to slip through as though it is OK.

Also, while I appreciate the SA configuration, it was causing us severe
issues when we were under a spam attack. It was not unusual to find the SA
engine backed due to a simple dictionary attack on one of our domains. Since
dropping the SA our inbound mail delay has not gone above 5 minutes more
than once, and in that case is lasted for only a couple of minutes while our
server fought off multiple spam attacks  from a large number of different
sights at the same time (finally saw that in the error logs).

Mark Thornton
San Marcos Internet, Inc
512-393-5300


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "postmaster" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2003 6:37 AM
Subject: [Modus] false positives


* This is the modus mailing list *

Sorry Micha�l,

but I find all this info very irritating, as if SCA is not safe on "Normal"
anymore, it leaves the "safe route" that Vircom did take with their former
antispam engines.

With Modus 2 people were absolutely safe when they used "Normal" as a
blocking level, even "Strong" was as good as 100% safe against false
positives. The users did not have to learn anything to use this level of
protection - and did not have to "whitelist" anybody.

Now with Modus 3 suddenly users report false positives on "normal level" and
you suggest them to use whitelists against false positives. You even say:
"Normal" doesn't mean it was caught on normal."
What does it mean then?

We still use Modus 2 together with a refined SpamAssassing 2.60 and see
almost zero false positives while we catch almost all spam. I suggested our
users to forward their spam to me and so I do receive about 2 or 3 per week.
We found that SA combined with Modus 2 Sieve is they best and most safe
solution against spam we ever used. This solution works so good that most of
our users are protected without even knowing it - this is the way an optimal
engine should work IMHO.

Reading the enthusiastic report about Modus 3 we wanted to upgrade as soon
as the first "refined" version comes out to benefit from an even stronger
anti-spam level. But if we cannot use the "Normal" and "Strong" level from
Modus anymore to have a *safe* backup for the spam stuff our SA engine
misses to catch, than we cannot use Modus 3 SCA at all, as our users shall
*not* have to learn anything, especially not have to think about whitelists,
they shall not even have to know that we run antivirus and antispam
protection for them if they prefer to "don't care" - what most people do.

So please: make "Normal" safe again, otherwise we will rather have to stay a
while longer with Modus 2, even though I *love* the availability to change
the attachment/virus scanning sequence in Modus 3 (this would be our primary
reason for an upgrade).

Finally I want to say that this mailing list did become my first source for
spam on some days in the last weeks. In former times people were posting
only when they had something relevant to say, and most of it was so
interesting that I even was reading what was not affecting us. Now there are
days where I am tempted to unsubscribe to get away from some babble that
blows up my inbox and eats up my working time. But as perhaps this is the
way things take if you become  successfull (and I really wish Vircom is), I
vote for a Modus WWW forum with all kind of professional boards - and a
party lounge for all people who do not have to work and rather have a strong
desire to chat.

Best regards
Kai Fiebach
Musikhochschule Luebeck, Germany
http://www.mh-luebeck.de


-----Original Message-----
From: Micha�l Gaudette [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 6:37 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Modus] false positives


* This is the modus mailing list *

Hi Christian,

> What about the spam level settings? All our spam is blocked
> under the level "normal". We see no spam being blocked by
> "strong" or "extreme"?
>
> Are the spam level settings still relevant?

Yes they are still relevant, but the actual information reported is not.
"Normal" doesn't mean it was caught on normal.  We'll log this in our
systems.

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