[quote] I asked the users to bounce a copy of incorrectly marked emails to the NoSpam address at each site. Unfortunately, the next email from the same source is marked as Spam again. After a few tries the users just stop sending the emails to the NoSpam address and moan at me instead.[/quote]

You have put your finger on one of the biggest dilemmas facing mail admins trying to implement Bayesian filtering in a network - managing user expectations.  I have found this a tricky problem and there are a few different strategies you can try.  Which one works for you may depend of the type of users as much as anything else.  At one site, I have to do all the classification myself because no one stays in post long enough to learn the details.

As Lex suggests, altering the whitelist expiry can help with infrequent mail lists.  Also, have a good read of the Spamhalter.pdf description - particularly the Whitelist/Blacklist section on page 17.

Hello All,

I now have the latest version of Mercury running on several servers. The only problem I seem to have run into is with the automatic Blacklist and Whitelist in Spamhalter. It appears that if an address gets onto the Blacklist before it gets to the Whitelist, then sending emails to the NOSPAM address has no effect. Further emails received from the same address still get marked as SPAM. This is beginning to drive my users mad.

I have put some addresses into the manual Whitelist but this manual method defeats the purpose of the NOSPAM address. As far as I can tell the auto Whitelist is working and any addresses that get onto it do not appear to have any further problems. A check of the database shows that there are addresses in the Whitelist so those being added as emails go out appear to be working. It just looks like those addresses that get put onto the Blacklist before they have a chance to go onto the whitelist cannot now get moved across.

Emails sent to SPAM and NOSPAM do get received by Mercury and I can see them being deleted. So the addresses appear to be OK and working. 

I assume that I have missed something in the configuration but despite checking and rechecking I cannot see what it is.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Regards,

Terry. 

What exactly are you seeing in the Spamhalter logs?

The 'blacklist' doesn't automatically label messages as spam, it stops addresses being whitelisted (IIRC).  I have many messages come through cleanly even though they are 'black'.

It can take some time for the training to give you good results - particularly if you have a lot of mixed mail for different users.  What are your Spamhalter statistics?

Hello Paul,

Thanks for the reply.

The problem appears to be related to the fact that an address in the blacklist cannot get onto the whitelist. Perhaps I have missed the point about the Blacklist but I assumed that anything from an address in the Blacklist would always get marked as Spam. I think you are saying that any email from a Blacklisted address always gets checked and any email from a Whitelisted site never gets checked.

Anyway, some of my sites receive a lot of emails with newsletters and other information. These addresses will never be replied to so they will not go into the automatic whitelist. They have tended to get marked as Spam as they contain words and phrases that are common to junk mail. I asked the users to bounce a copy of incorrectly marked emails to the NoSpam address at each site. Unfortunately, the next email from the same source is marked as Spam again. After a few tries the users just stop sending the emails to the NoSpam address and moan at me instead.

Nothing unusual about that but I can see that a fully working system really will benefit all users so I want to work out what I have done wrong. Not all messages are marked as Spam and many are coming through without any problems. I had just hoped that I would not have to add lots of email addresses to the manual Whitelist but I am not sure that there is any other solution.

I am visiting two sites this week and will look at the Spamhalter Statistics and the log files.

Regards,

Terry. 

Hi Terry

As Paul as suggested - have a wee look at the spamhalter logs.  You should be able to find in them all the instances that an address had been either white or black listed.  I have found that increasing the bayWhiteOldDays= value (Mercury/32 GUI: Configuration -> SpamHalter -> Database cleaning -> Records are obsolete after days:) from the default of 60 to 180 days helps.  I think that the problem is not the white or black list per se but the result of 'spam-like layout' newsletter emails that keep getting detected as spam after their address has been cleaned out of the white list by obsolescence.  Since nothing is being sent to the addresses there is no mechanism to keep the address in the automatic white list other than by manually entering it.  If you up the number of days above then the user only has to send the email through to nospam every 6 months so may be more inclined to do that and not complain to you :-).  The only warning is that increasing the value above will result in a bigger white4.db3 file which may have an impact on email throughput.

Lex