Improving filtering of SPAM...

[Christopher Kurtis Koeber]

Thanks. I have been reviewing the logs before but perhaps making the wrong adjustments based on that.

Regards,

Christopher Kurtis Koeber

-----Original Message-----
From: amavis-users [mailto:amavis-users-bounces+ckoeber=gmail.com at amavis.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Ben Koetter
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2013 5:22 PM
To: amavis-users at amavis.org
Subject: Re: Improving filtering of SPAM...

* Christopher Koeber <ckoeber at gmail.com>:
> Now, the current install isn't completely ineffective; it catches a 
> great deal of spam messages but my question stems from asking what can 
> I do to greatly increase the accuracy.
> 
> Is there a guide somewhere on improving detection of spam with 
> AmavisD? I couldn't find such a guide. Much of the items mentioned for 
> improving SpamAssassin was within the "local.cf" file but I know 
> AmavisD ignores that (from what I read). I also know I can lower the 
> tag/tag2/etc. numbers but then valid mail gets caught.

Just a little nitpicking: amavisd doesn't detect spam; spamassassin does.
amavisd only provides the content framework around various filters including spamassassin.

If you catch lots of spam you may, as a very basic measure, insure your filters have an understanding of what internal and external clients are and what inbound and outbound traffic is. If they don't then you should fix that because filters give different scores depending on direction and sender.
You may, if you can read German, read my blog entry on that:
<http://sys4.de/de/blog/2013/02/15/e-mail-content-policies-mit-amavis/>

Additionally, if you use whitelisting, either train and maintain it or turn it off. There's nothing more annoying than an automatism that automatically does the wrong thing.

For further, and better debugging, I suggest you take a look at the spam report headers in messages scanned by SA. Try to find out WHY they fired and, if they do the wrong thing, WHAT make them do the wrong thing.

Pretty basic stuff, but almost everything you are going to optimize builds upon that.

p at rick


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