Quick Question On Spam Assassin

[rojo]

Hello,

I read the instructions provided by TCH regarding the setup of Spam Assassin. I utilized the configuration provided by TCH-Bruce and Scooter B at http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/help/id212.htm.

 

One thing I am assuming that needs to be done is to set "rewrite_subject" to "1" so that the subject line will be rewritten as "***SPAM***" so that the email filter you set up in your email program can filter on it.

 

Based on the setup instructions as they are on the site I have been unable to get the spam filtered properly, even though it is clearly marked as spam by Spam Assassin. I see no ***SPAM*** anywhere in the email. Just recently I set up "rewrite_subject" to "1" to see if that works.

 

If I am correct in my interpetation, then it might be good to update the onsite instructions, if I am wrong, then OOPs I need help.

 

Thanks very much.

 

John

[TCH-Bruce]

Hi John and welcome to the family!

 

I do not have my rewrite subject turned on. And I do not have the Spam Box turned on either.

 

I have created a filter to work off any Spam header that begins with "Yes" and filter it to a spam email account that I created until I was sure I wasn't trapping good email. Later I changed the filter to Discard instead of filter to the spam email account I created.

[rojo]

Thanks for the reply Bruce, and thank you for the welcome.

 

After setting Spam Assassin back to the recommended setting I found out it was working, it is just that it was not tagging many emails as Spam, and that is with a setting of 5.

 

Trying to consider my alternatives here, one is to enhance the blacklist addresses which would be a never ending job as these spammers keep changing their addresses, second would be to try increasing the amount of spam caught by lowering the total hits to a 3 or a 4. More good emails may be tagged, but I can always whitelist them. I have it all going to a SPAM mailbox on my PC so I can monitor it all.

 

How does Spam Assassin "learn" what to tag and what not to? Is it from the blacklist/whitelist I set up? Currently it lets a lot through.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

John