[...] Well, I for one will do my part by making sure that mail from 30,000 seat customers sent with Outlook '03 get the full three points they deserve for b0rking up message-id.
More specifically, you will be adding those 3 points to messages sent by Outlook clients but not through Exchange servers, right? The the obvious answer to small companies will be to ignore those crackpots that convinced them to try an open-source server alternative, and simply buy Exchange server like that nice Microsoft person told them to. Those annual license fees are cheap compared to the aggravation of going any other way.
Look, I agree that the way MS Outlook is doing this is broken, and I also agree that flagging those messages is valid. But we're drifting into mixing up disdain for Microsoft with fighting spam. I don't think it's in our collective best interests to mix messages like this. And when the thread starts to turn into "spamassassin should ding MS clients", then it's self-destructive. It's great that we're educating users as to what the root of the problem is, but if we start sending shrill messages to dump Outlook, I suspect it'll largely be ignored.
[...] What should NOT be done is to LOWER the score, or write some special case rule to reward MSFT for their idiocy. They should have, as the RFC said, "Considered the consequences."
Agreed. As I mentioned in my original response, there were SEVERAL factors that were contributing to the spam score. A .biz domain and others made things worse. However, if someone wants to create a meta on their own systems to tweak things from known customers to drop those scores, that's also perfectly reasonable. I certainly can't dictate to my customers what mail client they should use (until they pay me to tell them at least.)
The 3.0 is enough to push a "mostly spammy" looking email from some bank into the autolearn=spam category. And yes, that's a good thing.
Yes, with ANY score, not just those that happen to flag Microsoft products.
- Bob
