[spambayes-dev] Re: Generating SB tokens based upon information on the net

[Brad Knowles]

At 12:20 PM -0500 2004-08-04, Skip Montanaro wrote:

>  Spambayes will root around in the Received: headers if you ask it to.  It
>  generates all sorts of tokens based on fragments of IP addresses and
>  hostnames it finds.  Perhaps it's already doing what you wanted and I failed
>  to make the connection in my original note.

	I don't know what it's doing.  I know nothing about the SpamBayes 
configuration on bag.

	I am stating that this is a capability that I believe we need.

>  There's no need to do blacklisting as far as I'm concerned.  Spambayes
>  already mines content from the sender fields, so (for example), mail
>  purporting to come from "billr at smart.net" generates tokens which are highly
>  spammy.  That effectively serves the same purpose but doesn't have the bad
>  property of blacklists or whitelists - that they ignore everything else the
>  software is trying to tell you about the content of the message.

	The content of the message is important, yes.  But you're 
throwing away all the envelope information which can also be very 
instructive.

	At the very least, all the envelope information should be 
incorporated into whatever system you're using to score the message.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.