what is x-slurp_urls doing (was:Re: [Spambayes] sb_tray and outgoing connection)

[Kenny Pitt]

benjamin_mueller at web.de wrote:
> Kenny Pitt wrote:
> 
>> Do you have the "x-slurp_urls" option enabled?  I can't think of any
>> other case where SpamBayes should try to do anything with the e-mail
>> content besides parse it into tokens.
> 
> Well, thank you Kenny.
> 
> Thus do I understand this function correctly, if the e-mail could not
> be classified exactly than spambayes is watching the website if there
> are any links in the e-mail?  

Exactly.  If SpamBayes is not sure about a message based strictly on the
content of the message, then it will look for URLs in the message.  If it
finds one then it will retrieve the content at that URL and add those tokens
to the information that it uses to classify the message.

The "x-" at the beginning of the option name indicates that this is an
experimental option.  It is disabled by default, and I haven't heard a lot
of reports about whether or not it has been helpful.  The content at the
other end of a spammer's URL seems like it would be very useful in
indicating the spamminess of the message, but it also has its risks.
Following a link in a spam message often indicates to the spammer that the
e-mail address is valid and that there was some "interest" in the content,
so could easily result in even more spam being received.

-- 
Kenny Pitt