[SPAM] RFC: SpamAssassin subject munging considered harmful :)

[Dennis Gilmore]

On Tuesday 02 February 2010 08:32:04 am Todd Zullinger wrote:
> I noticed that a number of messages to the users list have been marked
> with [Spam] in the subjects since the list migration.  This appears to
> be due to the Spamassassin settings on bastion.  I think this subject
> munging is undesirable and would like to see it stopped.  Having
> legitimate messages sent to list members tagged as [SPAM] serves no
> good purpose.  If I were a list member I might wonder why my message
> was marked or why Fedora is forwarding on mail it thinks is spam.
> 
> At the same time, it's worth noting that if the SpamAssassin settings
> are marking legitimate list mail as spam, they probably ought to be
> tweaked a bit.  If these messages had gone through bastion before
> hitting Mailman and were to a list with a rule to reject or discard on
> X-Spam-Flag (as I know several lists do, websites being one example),
> the messages would have been improperly discarded.
> 
> This isn't to say I don't appreciate the job that SpamAssassin does
> nor the hard work put in by Warren and others upstream.  I just want
> to ensure that SpamAssassin does not act too aggressively at marking
> up the mail that comes through fedoraproject.org.
> 
> I've attached an example of a recent users list message which was
> marked as spam improperly.  The relevant SpamAssassin headers:
> 
> X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.0 (2010-01-18) on
>  bastion2.fedora.phx.redhat.com
> X-Spam-Flag: YES
> X-Spam-Level: *****
> X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=5.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50,SPOOF_COM2COM,
>  SPOOF_COM2OTH autolearn=no version=3.3.0
> X-Spam-Report: *  2.7 SPOOF_COM2OTH URI: URI contains ".com" in middle * 
> 2.0 SPOOF_COM2COM URI: URI contains ".com" in middle and end *  0.8
> BAYES_50 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60% *      [score: 0.5000]

Mail only hits bastion on the way out.  all mail comes in via one of the 3 
smtp relays  and gets sent to the mailman server.  The idea of the relays is 
make sure we accept all mail coming in.    once processed by mailman all mail 
hits bastion on its way out.   so the lists should not reject mail improperly.  

Dennis
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