Re: SpamAssassin not hitting well on obvious spam

> I believe SA uses Bayes out of the box, but what I don't get is how will
> Bayes know it's spam (to train on, versus ham)

You tell it.

Bayes won't kick in on a new installation until you have manually fed it AT LEAST 200 each hams and spams. You do this by deciding yourself if a message is ham or spam and training appropriately.

Once it has at least the minimal training amount it will start classifying. And if you have auto-learning on, it will start learning from what it classifies. Of course, there is no guarantee that it will learn *correctly*. Again, it is up to you to monitor it (at least occasionally) and if necessary re-learn a message as the correct type.

If you get messages that are bayes_50 or near that it means Bayes doesn't have a clue about the message. You should give it one, especialy if it is spam, by again training it appropriately.

Bayes will work quite well on the type of spam you are getting. *once you train it*.

        Loren Received on Tue Oct 16 05:50:53 2007