Spam Assassin

[lhite]

can someone explain this to me:

i have a client who has a terrible spam problem -- literally 200+ spams per day. spam assassin has been totally ineffective, typically filtering under 10 a day. then last week, for totally unrelated reasons, we decided to convert all their email clients to use SSL mail, both POP and SMTP. and all of a sudden SA starts working like a charm, with something like a 95%+ hit rate! i really don't believe in coincidences like this -- something had to have happened. and yet, how would changing how the email is retrieved change how SA is working? is anyone here familiar enough with the inner workings of SA to explain this to me?

as a side note, i've had to move several clients off TCH because of spam issues and the lack of any effective tool here to deal with spam. now i wonder if converting to SSL POP is all i had to do? i've talked to a lot of people who use SA at different hosting companies, and they think SA is great -- it's only with my accounts here at TCH that i seem to have problems. and i notice there's a post here from last month (subject "Spam Assasin?") that echoes the same types of problems i've had with it in the past.

could it be that the "key" to using SA is to always configure your POP for SSL, and that's what everyone else is doing out there who has success with SA? if so, sure seems like a well kept secret as i can't find any such advice using The Google Machine.

 

lee

 

 

[TCH-Bala]

This is the first time I am hearing such a thing, there are no differences in how spamassassin works whether you are on POP/IMAP or with/without ssl. But I have never worked without secure ports. Regarding other hosts, please note that we are using the latest version of cpanel on all servers with nightly updates direct from their official repository so there should not be any difference in the underlying software. Spamassasin is a very generic tool and it all depends on how you configure it along with your filters that will make the difference. No two email accounts are never alike, so the set of rules you define for one may not be affective for the other. You need to continually tweak it till you get the right set.

[lhite]

good to know that SA here is the latest and greatest -- i guess it will remain a mystery as to why it seems to be so inconsistent at times. i know that a lot depends on how you configure it, but in this case that's not relevant. one day it was not catching anything, then all i did was change the POP to SSL -- didn't even go in to cpanel -- and literally within hours i had an email from the client saying that the spam problem had virtually disappeared all at once.

 

cue Rod Serling.........

[sirius]

Spam Assign does not do it for me. Some days it works ok, only 10-20 spam get through, most other days it misses hundreds of spams. I have it set for 3 plus I have hundreds of account level filters set up. Setting SA lower than 3 catches too many valid mails for me.

 

I gave up on SA working well and now forward mail to a gmail account. Gmail does a very good job of filtering spam. If you want, you can have gmail forward mail back to an address at TCH and check your mail there.