DEAR_SOMETHING rule scoring issue

[Gregory T Pelle <gr...@domainit.com>]

What is the procedure to have a rule score reviewed?

I have been looking over the scoring for version 3.1.x at

	http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_1_x.html

and think that a score of 1.6 is high for the DEAR_SOMETHING rule.  I
know that our customer support emails have the first line as "Dear
<customer's name>...".  It would seem to me that any business that is
trying to sound professional would have emails that hit this rule.

I have a couple users in the office who store all of their spam (for
some unknown reason) and asked them to search their spam for occurrences
of "DEAR" (case insensitive) and was told that it only occurred twice in
the tens of thousands of emails that these users have stored.

I read the wiki page

	http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/HowScoresAreAssigned

describing how scores are assigned.  Unfortunately, I am unable to
provide email due to security and privacy concerns.

I know that I can change the rule for my mail server, but this would
only lower the score for email entering my mail server and not the many
other mail servers who use SpamAssassin.


-- 
Greg Pelle
System Administrator
Domain-it! Inc.

Re: DEAR_SOMETHING rule scoring issue

[Logan Shaw <ls...@emitinc.com>]

On Wed, 9 Aug 2006, Gregory T Pelle wrote:
> Loren Wilton wrote:
>>> I could be wrong on this as i am not much of a regex expert, but it doesnt 
>>> appear that this rule will trigger on normal things like "Dear Jim"
>>> 
>>> body DEAR_SOMETHING             /\bDear 
>>> (?:IT\W|Internet|candidate|sirs?|madam|investor|travell?er|car 
>>> shopper|web)\b/i

>> So unless you name is Mr. Car Shopper or Ms. IT Professional, you really 
>> shouldn't have too much to worry about.

> My misunderstanding of the rule.  Thank you for the clarification.

I can see how you might assume that's what it does based on
the name.  That's what I assumed.  It's not immediately obvious
that "SOMETHING" in "DEAR_SOMETHING" means certain somethings
but not other somethings.  Maybe the rule should be called
"DEAR_CERTAIN_SOMETHINGS".  :-)

   - Logan

Re: DEAR_SOMETHING rule scoring issue

[Gregory T Pelle <gr...@domainit.com>]

Loren Wilton wrote:
>> I could be wrong on this as i am not much of a regex expert, but it 
>> doesnt appear that this rule will trigger on normal things like "Dear 
>> Jim"
>>
>> body DEAR_SOMETHING             /\bDear 
>> (?:IT\W|Internet|candidate|sirs?|madam|investor|travell?er|car 
>> shopper|web)\b/i
>> describe DEAR_SOMETHING         Contains 'Dear (something)'
>>
>> Can someone with some more regex experience confirm this?
> 
> Its just what you think it is:
> 
>    Dear IT
>    Dear Internet
>    Dear candidate
>    Dear sir
>    Dear investor
>    Dear car shopper
> etc.
> 
> (And since its a body rule this mail should hit it nicely!)
> 
> So unless you name is Mr. Car Shopper or Ms. IT Professional, you really 
> shouldn't have too much to worry about.
> 
>        Loren
> 
> 


My misunderstanding of the rule.  Thank you for the clarification.


-- 
Greg Pelle
System Administrator
Domain-it! Inc.

Re: DEAR_SOMETHING rule scoring issue

[Loren Wilton <lw...@earthlink.net>]

> I could be wrong on this as i am not much of a regex expert, but it doesnt 
> appear that this rule will trigger on normal things like "Dear Jim"
>
> body DEAR_SOMETHING             /\bDear 
> (?:IT\W|Internet|candidate|sirs?|madam|investor|travell?er|car 
> shopper|web)\b/i
> describe DEAR_SOMETHING         Contains 'Dear (something)'
>
> Can someone with some more regex experience confirm this?

Its just what you think it is:

    Dear IT
    Dear Internet
    Dear candidate
    Dear sir
    Dear investor
    Dear car shopper
etc.

(And since its a body rule this mail should hit it nicely!)

So unless you name is Mr. Car Shopper or Ms. IT Professional, you really 
shouldn't have too much to worry about.

        Loren

Re: DEAR_SOMETHING rule scoring issue

[Jim Maul <jm...@elih.org>]

Gregory T Pelle wrote:
> What is the procedure to have a rule score reviewed?
> 
> I have been looking over the scoring for version 3.1.x at
> 
>     http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_1_x.html
> 
> and think that a score of 1.6 is high for the DEAR_SOMETHING rule.  I
> know that our customer support emails have the first line as "Dear
> <customer's name>...".  It would seem to me that any business that is
> trying to sound professional would have emails that hit this rule.
> 

I could be wrong on this as i am not much of a regex expert, but it 
doesnt appear that this rule will trigger on normal things like "Dear Jim"

checking 20_phrases.cf shows:

body DEAR_FRIEND                /^\s*Dear Friend\b/i
describe DEAR_FRIEND            Dear Friend? That's not very dear!
body DEAR_SOMETHING             /\bDear 
(?:IT\W|Internet|candidate|sirs?|madam|investor|travell?er|car 
shopper|web)\b/i
describe DEAR_SOMETHING         Contains 'Dear (something)'

Can someone with some more regex experience confirm this?

-Jim

Re: DEAR_SOMETHING rule scoring issue

[Chris Lear <ch...@laculine.com>]

* Gregory T Pelle wrote (09/08/06 15:14):
> What is the procedure to have a rule score reviewed?
> 
> I have been looking over the scoring for version 3.1.x at
> 
> 	http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_1_x.html
> 
> and think that a score of 1.6 is high for the DEAR_SOMETHING rule.  I
> know that our customer support emails have the first line as "Dear
> <customer's name>...".  It would seem to me that any business that is
> trying to sound professional would have emails that hit this rule.

Where I work I'm always trying to persuade the people who write bulk
e-mail to customers *not* to start it with "Dear <customer's name>",
because I think it does the opposite of sounding professional. But maybe
it's just me. They are indeed trying to sound professional, and think
that personalising the e-mail with "Dear" will do that, and I don't seem
to win the argument. It hasn't made me lower the DEAR_SOMETHING score,
though.

Chris