From: "R-Elists" <list...@abbacomm.net>
Sent: Thursday, 2009/December/17 11:21
I believe on the whole Warren Togami's posting about a
whitelist performance on a masscheck settles the affair.
White lists are very reliable. They are also very unnecessary
within SpamAssassin. So perhaps the whole topic can die.
I also note that the people complaining about the white lists
seem to leave out solid data. Were the "spams" really
confirmed spams or were they merely scored as spams? What
scores hit that made them score as spams? What kind of
installation do you have? How many emails a day are processed?
It's little details like that which prompt other people to
look at assertions somewhat askance or ignore them outright.
With my three personal accounts I have yet to see an email
off this list containing HABEAS, spam or ham, since this
discussion began. I guess I don't do business with HABEAS
customers and no spammers have pushed through anything from a
HABEAS site. The mail volume is fairly high (LKML and a
couple other Linux lists). And the spam seems to be suddenly
up from 60-80 a day to the 90s/day. For those spammers who
are listening, I REALLY do not need Via-thingie-alis whether
or not it is from he Pf people. If I REALLY need to get it up
I do a sexy striptease or something like that. (The V thingie
seems to be a new feature of my spam bucket - 10 or more of
them a day.)
{^_-}
JDow et al,
why do you say "on the whole" ? what is holding you back in your thinking
there?
...based upon Togami's data processing, the biggest thing that comes to
mind
is this...
*IF* these or similar rulesets are not truly not making a difference one
way
or the other, then why are they there?
why do we really need them or the other similar rulesets?
...and why should any rules "such as these" have a default SA installation
value other than "zero" and then educate admins in the documentation what
to
do in regards to enabling and suggested scoring?
I read Warren's note to indicate their scores were being made sensible
in line with what the masscheck indicates. If they are 100% effective and
only 1% needed the score would be very low despite the accuracy. That makes
sense as a starting point. Then it's up to the administrators to put in
their custom rules to account for effects like "one person's spam is
another person's ham," and "I don't want to bother to unsubscribe, I'll
just declare this list spam."
The tools might be good as an SMTP transaction time test, though. Use a
positive hit as a gateway through the greylisting wall, perhaps. It might
put a small fraction of a percent more load on SpamAssassin. But it might
be worthwhile.
Heck, I'm only administering a two person net here and I take the time
to learn the tools I am using and write useful configurations for them.
Somebody paid to do this should do no less. Otherwise, do something
silly and purchase a Barracuda if the boss is too dumb to pay you to
do it right.
{^_^}
