[Spambayes] Why does the program put SPAM-ALERT on the subjectlinefor emails not detected as spam.

[Coe, Bob]

I'll elaborate on that a bit, since we have an upstream spam filter and I know a bit about how it works. The filter uses its algorithms to generate a spam score (similar to what Spambayes does), and the administrator is allowed to set two cutoff values: a higher one above which incoming messages are thrown in the bit bucket and a lower one above which a tag is placed in the Subject line. The tags are helpful to us (as a sanity check on the cutoff values we've chosen) and to the users, who might want to request whitelisting of a particular address or site (which we'lll do if we think the effect will be limited to that user).

Bob

MIS Department, City of Cambridge
831 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA 02139  ·  617-349-4217  ·  fax 617-349-6165

> -----Original Message-----
> From: spambayes-bounces at python.org
> [mailto:spambayes-bounces at python.org]On Behalf Of Tony Meyer
> Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 6:09 PM
> To: smillwee at securtest.com; spambayes at python.org
> Subject: RE: [Spambayes] Why does the program put SPAM-ALERT on the
> subjectlinefor emails not detected as spam.
> 
> 
> > Why does the program put SPAM-ALERT on the subject line
> > for emails not detected as spam.
> 
> It looks like you are using Microsoft Outlook (and therefore presumably the
> SpamBayes Outlook plug-in).  If that is the case, then SpamBayes does not
> put anything at all in the subject line.
> 
> ..., the (overwhelmingly) most obvious answer to the question is that
SpamBayes is not the one that is doing this.  It is most likely that someone
upstream (your ISP, your organisation, etc) is doing some sort of filtering
and adding the subject tag.  If they are making mistakes, then you'll have
to talk to them about that!