Re: [anti-spam-wg@localhost] SpamAssassin and this list

[Emma Bretherick <]

Hi there,

I think I might be able to make this a little clearer..

At 19:35 25/11/2003 +0100, Markus Stumpf wrote:

> Which will not work. Did you look at what spammers do currently?
> They misspell words on purpose to get the eMails through the filters.
> Filter producers are reworking their filters to catch up with these
> and they already have done to some extent. Do you think a few
> handmade modifications will bypass the filter? If it were as easy as
> this the filters would be completely worthless.
Anything that passes through the filter will still be checked manually and 
won't be automatically forwarded to the mailing list, the filter would 
simply help us to get rid of the obvious spam which we are not doing at the 
moment.

> Hmmm ... I am on this list for a few months at least and I have never
> seen UBE on that list. This may also be due to the fact that the list
> ist subscriber-post only (at least it was the last time I checked).
> So UBE transmissions will be droppped anyway.
> Or are you talking about Bounces due to rejects?
> Are they causing any serious problems to the admins of the mail servers?
> And if so which one?
>
> What is the reason for all of this?
So, currently we (at the RIPE NCC) manually go through every e-mail sent to 
anti-spam-wg@localhost which is not from an address subscribed to the list. 
If you are subscribed to the list your mail is automatically forwarded.

With the other RIPE mailing lists we use a spam filter to block all the 
obvious spam and then manually deal with the mails that slip through. We 
haven't done this yet for anti-spam for the reasons pointed out by Rodney 
(it might be more of a risk that a legitimate mail from a non-subscribed 
address is discarded).

As one of the mail moderators at the RIPE NCC I have never heard of a 
legitimate mail being discarded by the filters and we also find that it is 
not very frequent that mails are sent from un-subscribed lists, so the 
majority of mails dealt with manually are still spam. The filter however 
does make quite a difference!

Obviously though as one of the moderators I am slightly biased and wouldn't 
want to sway your opinions ;-)

Cheers,
Emma

Emma Bretherick
Communications Assistant
RIPE NCC


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------------------------------------
Emma Bretherick
RIPE NCC
http://www.ripe.net/