Bayes learning email address

[Owen Mehegan <ow...@nerdnetworks.org>]

To make it easier for my users to train my server's Bayes database, I  
set up a user with the following procmail recipe in its .procmailrc:

:0
* < 256000

    {
    :0c: spamassassin.spamlock
    | sa-learn --spam

    :0: spamassassin.filelock
    spam
    }

The idea is for people to redirect (not forward) uncaught spam to  
that address and have it added to our Bayes system. I suppose I could  
also --report those messages to the various reporting systems. Will  
this work, or are there pitfalls I haven't thought of?

--
owen@nerdnetworks.org (Owen B. Mehegan)
'I learned this, at least, by my experiment;
that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.'
  --Henry David Thoreau

Re: Bayes learning email address

[Andrew <an...@arda.homeunix.net>]

John D. Hardin wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Apr 2006, mouss wrote:
> 
> 
>>- you are trusting your users to make the right decision. The
>>problem is that different people have different opinions of what
>>is spam and what is not. Things get even worst if one user isn't
>>honest...
> 
> 
> That's a problem with *any* scheme for allowing the users to train
> Bayes themselves.
> 
> In practice, however, I think you'll see much more apathy than
> stupidity or malice. My problem was with getting my users to even
> *look at* their marginal-spams folder and classify the messages. Ever.
> 
You should check for things like your own quota notification messages in 
the spam folder. If you send a boilerplate email in response to someone 
sending an email to your abuse or postmaster address, check for that 
too. I used to work for a fairly large ISP and we got these sorts of 
things sent to us all the time.

Andrew

Re: Bayes learning email address

["John D. Hardin" <jh...@impsec.org>]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2006, mouss wrote:

> - you are trusting your users to make the right decision. The
> problem is that different people have different opinions of what
> is spam and what is not. Things get even worst if one user isn't
> honest...

That's a problem with *any* scheme for allowing the users to train
Bayes themselves.

In practice, however, I think you'll see much more apathy than
stupidity or malice. My problem was with getting my users to even
*look at* their marginal-spams folder and classify the messages. Ever.

--
 John Hardin KA7OHZ    ICQ#15735746    http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
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Re: Bayes learning email address

[mouss <us...@free.fr>]

Owen Mehegan wrote:
> To make it easier for my users to train my server's Bayes database, I 
> set up a user with the following procmail recipe in its .procmailrc:
> 
> :0
> * < 256000
> 
>    {
>    :0c: spamassassin.spamlock
>    | sa-learn --spam
> 
>    :0: spamassassin.filelock
>    spam
>    }
> 
> The idea is for people to redirect (not forward) uncaught spam to that 
> address and have it added to our Bayes system. I suppose I could also 
> --report those messages to the various reporting systems. Will this 
> work, or are there pitfalls I haven't thought of?

- you are trusting your users to make the right decision. The problem is 
that different people have different opinions of what is spam and what 
is not. Things get even worst if one user isn't honest...

- you must protect this address from getting mail from untrusted sources 
(from outside for example). otherwise, anyone can pollute your bayes.

- how about reporting false positives?