Comments on: Genuine Tsunami Warning Email Blocked as Spam

By: Dick Wilcox

Dick Wilcox — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 01:43:24 +0000

I think this may be just cause for offering a bounty on the heads of spammers. Do you think fifty cents American would be over doing it?

By: Justin Mason

Justin Mason — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 00:42:53 +0000

(sorry, I forgot — it’s Aunty, not [elided]! ;)

Yeah, we’re actually still waiting for somebody to provide us with a copy of the original mail so we can have a look, and see what bits might be whitelistable. No luck so far!

By: Aunty Spam

Aunty Spam — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 23:41:12 +0000

Wow! We’d love to get more of the real story here, if you guys would like to share it. All of the original stories seem to include the line “The problem arises if the open-source filter is installed straight out of the box;”

In fact, if one of you guys would like to tell Aunty’s readers how they can check to make sure that all is as it should be (or, even, how to white list such email), that would be wonderful!

Kissy kissy,

Aunty Spam

By: Justin Mason

Justin Mason — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 22:30:16 +0000

Hi [Ed. note: Aunty] –

yep, just echoing Michael here. We’re a bit peeved that this story has grown legs, since what it actually says (once you strip out the comment and opinion) is that a notification mail was NOT marked as spam, and instead scored a 3.7!

If somebody was to change their threshold so that this was marked as spam, they’d be seeing a *lot* more false positives than just that one mail… certainly not recommended.

By: Michael Parker

Michael Parker — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 03:04:43 +0000

It should be noted, that the article states that a stock SpamAssassin install did not block the latest warning. It was only those installs that had either tweaked their required scores or added some third-party rulesets.

The SpamAssassin development team is interested in getting their hands on a copy of the warning email (including full headers). If you have a copy of the mail please contact the development team via http://spamassassin.apache.org/ . There may be something we can do to help avoid legitimate warning messages from getting caughts.