What does "conservative" mean vs "aggressive"?

[drkwc <dr...@mindbodyspiritjournal.com>]

NB user question:

I currently have the basic score set at the default 5. Not sure what
"conservative" means vs "aggressive". '5' is said to be rather aggressive. 8
or 10 is said to be more conservative and more appropriate for an ISP. Does
conservative, in this case mean -- as I'm thinking that it does--  "less
likely to label an email as spam?" Or does it mean the opposite? Does it
mean "more likely to label an email as spam?" (Does "aggressive" mean allows
more emails through without marking them as spam, or the opposite?) I only
need to know for sure what "conservative" means in order to understand all
this.

Thanks,
ken
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Re: What does "conservative" mean vs "aggressive"?

[drkwc <dr...@mindbodyspiritjournal.com>]

Very helpful Rob McEwen. And thank you for the referral to Justin Mason's
piece.
--kwc
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Re: What does "conservative" mean vs "aggressive"?

[Rob McEwen <ro...@invaluement.com>]

drkwc wrote:
> "conservative" means vs "aggressive".

"conservative" = setting a higher spam score threshold to ensure that LESS legitimate mail mistakenly blocked, even if that means that more spam makes it into the inbox

"aggressive" = setting a lower spam score threshold with a goal of blocking MORE spam, even if it means that the amount of legit mail (FP) being mistakenly blocked increases

Generally, there always a trade-off. HOWEVER--adding to SA just the right combinations of add-on anti-spam tools and non-default DNSBLs can often defy that trade-off and give you more of the "best of both"... that being more spam blocked without incurring a corresponding increase in FPs. Many (including many on this SA list) have tweaked the SA default settings, including adding extra add-ins and DNSBLs, and then achieved higher spam catch rates without a corresponding increase of FPs. But lowering the score (alone) to block more spam will definitely lead to more FPs. And raising it (alone) will lead to more spam getting into inboxes.

In fact, Justin Mason has an excellent blog post on the effects of raising or lowering your SA spam threshold on both spam catch-rates and FP rates. He includes some excellent graphs.

Read about it here:

http://taint.org/2008/02/29/155648a.html

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Rob McEwen
http://dnsbl.invaluement.com/
rob@invaluement.com
+1 (478) 475-9032