SpamAssassin & GoDaddy - Info Request

Watch out for transfers with certain filters...

[decdim]

Ran into a wee bit of a problem this last week when SpamAssassin deleted (/dev/null) a pending transfer request from GoDaddy. After repeated attempts to get the message resent, I still didn't get my "confirmation transfer request". I had to disable SpamAssassin to get the message into.

I attempted to forward all spam into a sandbox to go through but something strange occurred to which SpamAssassin was loaded into memory with the old data to send messages with the filters into /dev/null. So I had to disable. Now the filters are working with the "sandbox" and to my disgust, I've received over 70 messages in a little over 12 hours of setup.

If anyone is going to do a transfer from one domain provider to GoDaddy and they have SpamAssassin, I would appreciate to know what SpamAssassin tags are showing up that were triggering my filters.

I should receive another e-mail from them within 5 days, but it was the initial message that was blocked and I have no clue what was triggered (or if it was several tags). Please post if you get the tags found!

Thanks!

[IanTurner]

Many Spam filters will pick up standard format emails, if they have whitelists or learning algorithms this is not a major problem.

[decdim]

I've got GoDaddy in my whitelite, unfortunately my filters were set for /dev/null - have them set for a "junk box" right now so I can check all incoming messages.

Receiving an average of 120 message per day! :P

Some are "legit" (in whitelist) but checking Spam Assassin Headers show they use certain "tags" that I have set for delete...

...so I'm trying to reconfigure to block the junk and allow the good in. Kind of a pain but necessary to do.

Ah well!

[vrtlw]

It took me a few weeks to get spamassassin trained nicely, it all depends on the level of mail going through the server. Eventually I sat down and went through my inbox and sorted out lots of spam to train the bayesian filter, I now have setup a couple of IMAP folders so that when it misses or incorrectly tags mail coming in I just copy it into the relevant folder.

The easiest way I found to deal with mail tagged as spam is to create a rule to forward the tagged message to a challenge/response system, not a spambox. Normally I would not touch these types of systems but now I am seeing 1 genuine mail per month actually getting challenged. That is a small price to me and my spam is now all but non-existant.

[decdim]

Do you use the challenge system through your e-mail client ("sub-filter" that handles the mail that comes in) or is on your server?

I've had to change my filters several times and I messed up Friday and caused all incoming mail to bounce out. Unfortunately I was on the road after that and didn't know about the problem till Sunday morning.

Had to disable SpamAssassin completely for a while to get messages bouncing to come back in. For some reason SpamAssassin was "holding" the old filter rules in memory, though I corrected them...

May have lost some legit mail, as under my "main account" for the system there were "notices" showing what was bouncing out (and eventually would return to sender if they couldn't deliver). Think 1 or 2 went back but if they were legit, most likely those people will write back as they know I'm still around...

What I would like to see possible is a "filter" (rule actually) that would bounce mail back on "nonexistant" addresses. Some of the junk mail coming in is addressed to e-mail accounts that were changed or never existed. So I want the spammers to realize they don't exist and remove them from whatever list they found them on. By /dev/null the messages they may think it exists and continue to send junk to them. :P

Also it would be nice to see that "whitelist" users are considered legit always no matter if they happen to send junk mail. That way if you tag for instance Webmaster World as legit and they send junk mail, you will still get it versus /dev/null or whatever "rule" you have set for the filter. It's annoying that even though the user is tagged "whitelist", if they hit any filter you have tagged as bad - that filter will go into effect.

[decdim]

:)

Found the tag/s for GoDaddy:

LIMITED_TIME_ONLY
NO_REAL_NAME
RCVD_IN_BL_SPAMCOP_NET
SUBJ_ALL_CAPS

The one that was triggered was:

RCVD_IN_BL_SPAMCOP_NET

Also have found this for several other "legit" sites while going through a "spam mail filter box". Unfortunate many sites seem to get this filter attached, so beware when using with your site!

Regards.