Re: [ILUG] Re: announcing a new spam filter

From: Justin Mason (jm@jmason.org)
Date: Thu May 03 2001 - 06:10:40 PDT


Joseph S. Barrera III said:

> > The hit rate (given my spam load) is about 95% of spam is trapped,
> Sounds cool...
> > and the false positive rate is below 0.5%.
> What do the false positives look like?
> 0.5% for me is at least one message per day...

Mainly, a false positive is due to:

    - javascript embedded in the mail, e.g. web developers.

    - spam text in the mail, e.g. anti-spam people ;)

    - "anti-spammed" From addresses, e.g. the from address as a result has
      no valid MX. Happens with mails gatewayed from USENET.

    - and users who's ISP has been listed on the RBL.

What I generally do is refile the spam into a folder, so I can check it
once every now and again for false positives (and see how much spam I get
nowadays). I don't recommend bit-bucketing it without running it past a
human first...

--j.



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