On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:11:17 -0500 Paul Russell said:
>
>The rationale for X-SPAM jobs is no longer valid. Spammers used to send

Actually, this is the question.  Is the rationale for X-SPAM jobs
still valid?  The step now is how do we answer that question.
We have different people answering the question differently,
and it probably will be better if we step back and objectively look
how to answer the question first.

>hundreds, even thousands of messages with the same sender address, so
>blocking or quarantining all messages with a sender address seen on spam
>was effective. Spammers' techniques have changed, but LISTSERV is still
>using the same old model that used to work "back in the old days". I think
>it is time to review that model to determine whether it is still valid in
>the current spam environment. It appears to me that the cost of this
>feature significantly outweighs the benefit. Does anyone share this view?

I might.  It isn't costing us much at this time, but it obviously is
to both Notre Dame and PSU.  Is the cost generating your own X-SPAM
or reading others?  Currently reading others is tied to the backbone.
Is there a case to be made for splitting them?

I think one of the important questions is "How much email does Listserv
block with the X-SPAM filters?"  Does anyone know the answer to that?

L-Soft currently uses F-Secure for anti-virus scanning.  I believe
Eric stated a while ago that the cost to integrate a more comprehensive
spam filter, such as SpamAssassin, into Listserv would be worse
than the X-SPAM costs.  However, my guess (and this should also be
answered somehow) is that many Listserv sites run some sort of SA
on a machine before Listserv.  Would it make sense for Listserv
to have a mechanism to be more agressive on the SA headers?
Maybe something like
     filter-hold= "X-Spam-Score > 1.00"
would say any email for this list with a header that has a spam score
with a value great that 1.00 is to be held for release?

/ahw
>
>--
>Paul Russell
>Senior Systems Administrator
>OIT Messaging Services Team
>University of Notre Dame