|
For your consideration of changed wording, I would suggest replacing the
first sentence of the message with something like:
X-Spam-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system
"mx13.mail.msu.edu", has
evaluated this incoming email for characteristics that might
indicate it is spam.
If it was determined likely to be spam, the text *****SPAM***** was
added to the
subject line.
I would quibble with the phrase in the second original sentence that says
"The original message has been attached to this" (as far as I can tell it is
not attached in the sense most people mean when they refer to an email
attachment, it's simply present as a normal message body), but most people
won't pay any attention to that, so it probably doesn't matter. I also
question the usefulness of the "Content preview" section (only a geeky
MSUNAG reader would download mail headers without the bodies and then
examine the hidden X- headers to preview the content to help decide whether
something is really spam or not ;-), but it's also not a big enough deal to
argue about.
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of David McFarlane
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] "Possible spam" messages
Talked with Brian Martinez on the phone, here is my understanding of the
situation (of course any mistakes in this account are my own fault and not
Brian's).
Prior to Mon 22 Dec 2008, incoming e-mail got checked against the user's
settings. If they enabled campus spam filtering then the e-mail got
filtered. If it then reached a high enough score then it got labelled and
processed as spam, otherwise it got passed on with little comment.
Starting Mon 22 Dec 2008, user spam settings are ignored. All mail to
<recipient>@[log in to unmask] addresses that comes from <sender>@[log in to unmask] addresses
does *not* go through the spam filter, as we presume that
intra- @[log in to unmask] e-mail is not spam (and if so will be handled through other
administrative mechanisms, as in the Kara Spencer case, see
http://www.statenews.com/index.php/article/2008/12/asmsu_association_directo
r_found_guilty_of_misusing_resources
). All other incoming e-mail goes through the campus spam filter, AND (this
is the point that kept getting missed) the filter now adds the "possible
spam" message that we have been seeing. E.g., since <sender>@[log in to unmask]
does not come from @[log in to unmask], all the MSUNAG e-mail now gets the "possible
spam" header.
Since messages from @[log in to unmask] do not get filtered, it could be said that
these addresses are whitelisted, but I do not know if that is technically
accurate. Otherwise, there is no whitelist.
So something *did* change in spam filtering, namely the boilerplate
"possible spam" message got added to *all* messages that go through the spam
filter. Users whose e-mail readers hide the headers will never see this,
and Eudora users like me may add "TabooHeaders=X-Spam-Report" to the
settings in their Eudora.ini file to hide these (thanks Chris for that
tip!).
Following the discussion here on MSUNAG, ATS is looking into tweaking this,
including setting a higher threshold for "possible spam" or changing the
wording of the message. [Editorial aside: This is exactly why it was a
good thing for the mail team to roll out this switch while the bulk of users
were gone.]
Tbanks to the mail team and everyone for getting us through the transition
to a better mail system.
-- dkm, Professional Faultfinder
|
