[MlMt] How is span score computed?

[William Allen]

Thanks! That was very informative and helpful.

Regards,
Bill

On 26 Sep 2024, at 11:09, Bill Cole wrote:

> On 2024-09-26 at 09:47:21 UTC-0400 (Thu, 26 Sep 2024 09:47:21 -0400)
> William Allen <mailmate at lists.freron.com>
> is rumored to have said:
>
>> I subscribe to my local newspaper’s daily bulletin. Recently I 
>> noticed I wasn’t getting it anymore and after looking a the junk 
>> folder saw it had a spam score of 4.0. Just looking at the mailings I 
>> can’t see any difference. Is there any way to understand what is 
>> triggering a score for a particular piece of mail? Likewise, is there 
>> a way to override the filter for a particular sender?
>
> MailMate itself does not score messages. The scores it can detect are 
> those determined either by SpamSieve locally or by your email 
> provider's spam filters. Without knowing which is relevant in your 
> case, it isn't possible to say how to adjust it. So if you have 
> installed SpamSieve, consult its documentation for how to adjust its 
> scoring. If you haven't installed SpamSieve, the score is being added 
> by your mailbox provider and you should ask them what adjustments are 
> available.
>
> SOME (not all) mailbox providers claim that by removing the $Junk flag 
> and/or adding a $NotJunk flag and/or moving mail from a "Junk" or 
> "Spam" mailbox to the INBOX will be noticed by their filter 
> maintenance systems and lead to future similar messages no0t being 
> marked as spam. SOME also claim that if you add the sender to an 
> address book linked to their mail system (such as Google, iCloud, or 
> Exchange Online/MS365) it will prevent future mail from being labeled 
> Spam.
>
> [Puts on Apache SpamAssassin maintainer hat for the following tangent]
>
> One of the most common free and open-source toolkits included by mail 
> providers as a part of their spam filters is SpamAssassin, maintained 
> by the Apache Software Foundation. Anyone can use SpamAssassin and 
> modify it however they like. It is sometimes useful to use a 
> SpamAssassin scan to figure out what may be considered spam by systems 
> that use it *and* by other tools that use similar scanning approaches. 
> If you're comfortable working with command line tools and understand 
> how to setup a Perl runtime environment (probably with MacPorts or 
> Homebrew) it can be useful to install SpamAssassin and use it to 
> answer such questions as "why was this marked as spam?"
>
> Unfortunately, the most easily findable website offering the general 
> public SpamAssassin scans is miserably misconfigured and misleading. 
> If you do find and use it or any similar tool online, you should 
> understand that any spam filtering  requires site-specific information 
> to work well, so public scanners are always going to make mistakes 
> based on their lack of knowledge. I don't link to public scanners 
> because they have that innate flaw, but some people find them helpful.
>
>
> -- 
> Bill Cole
> bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
> (AKA @grumpybozo at toad.social and many *@billmail.scconsult.com 
> addresses)
> Not Currently Available For Hire

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