..junk E-mail..

[Tom Kysilko]

At 09:00 AM 3/21/2002 -0500, GSCole wrote:
>Junk e-mail, as defined by one organization, is e-mail that contains
>certain words/phrases.  In some instances, the punctuation used is
>important.  Perhaps the delivery of the ADS newsletter is affected by
>the junk e-mail filter noted below, not to mention other filters that
>may be out-and-about.

My ISP uses a filter called SpamAssassin to identify spam. It has been in a
testing phase for some months as the postmaster tweaks the rules and
definitions so as not to mislabel ordinary mail as spam.  (He also assured
me that filtering will be opt-in optional.)  Clearly, he has a ways to go.
A recent post by Barry Popik scored pretty high on his spam scale.  The
following X-headers were added by SpamAssassin as configured by my ISP.

>>>>>
From: Barry Popik <bapopik at HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Wildfoods Festival & Velvet Antlers
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=7 required=6
tests=FROM_FORGED_HOTMAIL,SUBJ_HAS_SPACES,INVALID_MSGID,PORN_3,MAILTO_LINK,C
LICK_HERE_LINK version=2.0
X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.0 (devel $Id: SpamAssassin.pm,v 1.51
2001/12/19 05:20:44 jmason Exp $)
X-Spam-Report:   7.5 hits, 6 required;
  *  1.2 -- Forged From: line claiming to be from hotmail.com
  *  1.0 -- Subject contains lots of white space
  *  1.0 -- Message-Id is not valid, according to RFC-2822
  *  0.6 -- BODY: Uses words and phrases which indicate porn (3)
  *  0.7 -- BODY: Includes a URL link to send an email
  *  3.0 -- BODY: Tells you to click on a URL
<<<<<

Anyone talking about velvet antlers has got to be talkin' dirty.  :-)

BTW, all mail from ADS-L scores at least two hits, namely:
  *  1.0 -- Subject contains lots of white space
  *  1.0 -- Message-Id is not valid, according to RFC-2822

I know little about Message-Ids, but the leading spaces in all of our
subject lines imitate a classic spammer trick for eluding less
sophisticated spam filters.


  Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
  pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA