On 29 Dec 2015, at 8:28, Jude DaShiell wrote:
With spamassassin, is it possible to have the filter show counts of number of messages sent to spam, number of messages sent to ham, and total number of messages processed that a user can check?
Since SpamAssassin is a suite of Perl modules and an associated set of customizable rules, rather than a single filtering tool, the answer to that is both "Yes" and "No."
SA itself does not include substantial record-keeping & reporting functionality. However, it is entirely feasible to put together an MTA and SA with tools & config that makes it possible to report complex stats for the mail SA sees on a per-user basis and make them available to each user. I've done that myself multiple times in environments using 3 different MTAs and 2 radically different modes of plumbing between the MTA and SA. As those have all been bespoke implementations (and some I don't even have access to any more) I cannot share them.
On the other hand, I see such stats as inherently problematic. Good anti-spam in any sort of environment is layered in such a way that large percentages (usually overwhelming majorities) of would-be-spam never even reaches the point of a SMTP RCPT command, much less a chance to run it through a content filter using SA. Depending on the size & diversity of the users & their legit mail, only ~3-20% of could-be-incoming mail is subjected to full content filtering in a mature system and that generally means the vast bulk of both spam and ham going around SA, not through it. In my experience, when you start telling users useful and meaningful details of how & how well their mail filtering works they either lose all interest or freak out. This makes the creation of robust user-facing reporting tools worse than a waste of time: crafting an excuse for chronic user panics. I'm glad the people who put significant time into SA development have not wasted it trying to enable such things.
