[H-GEN] The declining effectiveness of SpamAssassin

[Bradley Marshall]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 11:52:14AM +1000, Greg Black wrote:
> Twelve months ago, SpamAssassin identified 80% of the spam that
> made it past my other defences; as a result, I only saw about 4
> spam messages a day.  Now, SA is only catching 61% of the spam
> and the ever-increasing volume of spam means that I'm seeing 48
> spam messages a day in my inbox.
> 
> I could live with 4 a day; but 48 is just too much.  I'm curious
> to hear from people who have found better ways of keeping on top
> of this problem.
> 
> One detail: although SA has been upgraded several times since I
> began using it, I'm still using version 2.44.  I'm planning to
> test version 2.63 in the next few days to see whether it has
> evolved enough to make it more useful.

So, what you're saying is you're using a year old copy of SA, and the
rulesets aren't coping with newer spam.  I'd suggest you'll find that SA
will cope better if you upgrade it to get the newer rulesets to handle the
changes in spam over time.  Basically, its an arms race with spammers trying
to get around SA, and SA putting in new rulesets to stop them.

Another thing to consider is using the bayesian filtering in the newer
versions of SA - it seems to help a bit too.

Thanks,
Brad
-- 
Brad Marshall
brad at humbug.org.au
http://quark.humbug.org.au/