[Spambayes] SpamBayes feedback

[Scott]

Hi Amedee,

I'm glad that you are 100% confident that you'll never get any false
positives. Unfortunately, I can't share that level of confidence, at least
not at this time. I'm just not a trusting enough person to do so. Also, I
have already seen enough false-positives from SpamBayes that indicate to me
that I shouldn't yet trust it above a certain level. But I think I will
always want to review my spam folder. Initially, it's just a matter of
getting the spam out of my way so I can look at my important email right
away, then look at my spam folder later, just to make sure everything is
kosher.

I believe that spammers are persistent, and good at what they do. As they
are able to make their junk email look more and more like legitimate email
(to anti-spam filters), this automatically reduces the legitimacy of
non-spam messages. It is for this reason that I could never trust an
anti-spam product 100%. Darn those spammer guys.

For me, it's either in my Inbox, or it's not. After that it's not really
very important to me what the percentage of clues is for a given message.
This is just my way of looking at it. I'm guessing, wait strike that, I
don't need to guess, that not everybody is going to look at it the same way
as I do. I just wanted to share my experience is all. I still like SpamBayes
overall and I'll continue to use it for the time being. I'm an IT support
guy, and I even recommend SpamBayes to many people that I help.

I agree with your theory about the English language thing, it makes sense.

Thanks again,
-scott




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Amedee Van Gasse [mailto:amedee at amedee.be] 
> Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 9:00 AM
> To: Scott
> Cc: spambayes at python.org
> Subject: Re: [Spambayes] SpamBayes feedback
> 
> Op vrijdag 20-10-2006 om 07:27 uur [tijdzone -0700], schreef Scott:
> 
> > [-] I don't like having a "Junk Suspects" folder. To me, this just 
> > means that I have two spam folders to manage instead of 
> one. As a work 
> > around, I have just set both spam and spam suspects to go 
> to the same 
> > Junk folder. I just made this change, so I don't yet know 
> if this will 
> > cause any problems, but I don't see why it should. I just wanted to 
> > let you know that I think it's not overly useful, to have 
> the Suspects 
> > folder I mean, if the spam is getting separated from my 
> Inbox in the 
> > first place, and I have to evaluate it anyway, that it 
> should all be 
> > in the same spam folder. My previous comment about "ever-changing 
> > tactics" on the part of the spammers should be a good 
> example of the fact that what is and isn't spam is hard to determine.
> > Therefore, I cannot (and should not) trust 100% that 
> everything that 
> > goes into the Junk folder really is spam, and that everything that 
> > goes into the Suspects folder isn't spam. Hence, I have to 
> manage both.
> 
> Scott,
> 
> I respectfully disagree.
> For me, the spam folder contains spam that is really, really, 
> really spam. I'm so confident about it that my procmail 
> doesn't even put it in a spam folder but directly in /dev/null.
> I also have 2 "suspect" folders: possible ham and possible spam.
> About 1 or 2 messages wind up in these folders every day (of 
> the several hundreds that arrive, according to postfix)
> 
> To be honest, having a native language that isn't English helps a lot.
> This means that bayesian spam filters are more effective for 
> languages that aren't used a lot in spam. Just my pet theory.
> 
> --
> Amedee
>