[thelist] Why Does SpamAssassin Hate America? (Or at least just me?)

JS Bracher JSB at DifferentPaths.net
Thu Apr 3 00:22:32 CDT 2008


It seems the spammers are winning, and the people making tools to hide 
spam from us are getting too desperate.

I'd give up, warn your users that SpamAssassin is is blocking email to 
them, and use RSS.  RSS would seem to be a better fit anyway.  You 
should be able to set it up so the users see the list of files, and can 
download those they care about.

Good luck.
-Jim

Ben Dyer wrote:
> Admittedly, I'm being a little facetious, but I'm very irked with
> SpamAssassin right now.
> 
> I'm writing an application that, among many other things, does some
> simple file sharing.  The idea is a user uploads a series of documents
> (architectural documents, in this case) and can share them with other
> users.  The user gets the e-mail notification, logs into the site, and
> there are the documents that were shared with them.
> 
> The problem we're experiencing now is that our e-mail is constantly
> being flagged as spam by SpamAssassin.  It doesn't have anything to do
> with the server: none of the SpamAssassin flags have anything to do
> with having an open relay, not matching a domain, being on one of the
> e-mail blacklists, etc.  The only major flag that we get every single
> time is:
> 
>  5.0 BAYES_99 BODY: Bayesian spam probability is 99 to 100%
>         *      [score: 1.0000]
> 
> Now, I know what this means (already looked it up:
> http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=330643 ), but no matter
> what content I send in my tests: short e-mails, long e-mails, text
> e-mails, HTML e-mails, multipart e-mails, the Wikipedia article on the
> Missouri River (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_River), that
> Bayesian spam flag is tripped every single time and it gets flagged as
> spam.
> 
> So, what can I do?  I took care to avoid "spammy" words, but
> SpamAssassin doesn't like the e-mail anyway.  I'm doing HTML e-mail
> now, but it didn't like the content when I did text e-mails either.
> Here's the contents I've been trying (with the pertinent bits and most
> of the gnarly HTML removed):
> 
> <h2>You have documents!</h2>
> 
> <p>Hello, {RECIPIENTNAME}!</p>
> 
> <p>{SENDERNAME} of {SENDERCOMPANY} has forwarded you some
> architectural documents using {NAMEOFSITE}, a service where you can
> preview these architectural drawings and then have them printed out
> for your use. You can see these files that have been shared with you
> by <a>viewing the "{PROJECTNAME}" project</a>.</p>
> 
> <h2><a>Preview the "{PROJECTNAME}" Files</a></h2>
> 
> <p><em>{NAMEOFSITE} is a service where architects, owners, general
> contractors, subcontractors and vendors can share architectural
> documents quickly and efficiently. You are receiving this e-mail only
> because someone you know or have worked with has given you access to
> these documents. If you believe this to be in error, please contact
> the original sender, {SENDERNAME}, at <a
> href="mailto:{SENDEREMAIL}">{SENDEREMAIL}</a>.</p>
> 
> Please help! I'm not ready to spend the next three years of my life
> teaching people how to check their junk mail folders.
> 
> --Ben
> 



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