Spam Assassin seems to have loosened up lately. I see it in Nodeworx and on a different server with a different control panel. It seems a score of 5 isn’t near as aggressive as it could be. Anybody else noticing the same?
I’ve had a couple clients tell me they are getting more spam, but didn’t really think anything of it. So maybe you’re right? 
Volume of spam seems typical for me personally, it’s just that spams are identified less frequently. I have in mind a particular user on a particular domain who would make a good study.
Check whether your spamassassin version is 3.0.3. When my shared hosting was with interworx, I was getting many mails not marked as spam (out of 100 spams only 24 got marked; many were with scores 1.x, 2.x or 3.x). I had a score of 5.0.
I reported and finally they upgraded SA to 3.1.0 and the problem solved (I had only about 5 or 6 spams out of 100 not being marked greater than 5.0)
Upgrade if it is 3.0.3 (I think even 3.0.4 would do well; as I had no problems with it when I was with another host prior to the iworx host)
Can iworx provide a feature so that mails with spam scores greater than a user set value (say 15.0) are automatically deleted?
…I was getting many mails not marked as spam (out of 100 spams only 24 got marked; many were with scores 1.x, 2.x or 3.x). I had a score of 5.0.
Same thing here! I was going to guestimate that a quarter amount of spams are marked or moved accurately. Same thing on a system running Exim.
I figured it might be an issue with the release. But wouldn’t it be best to update spamd in an IWorx update process? I’ve bungled a couple things already with extra yum repos.
This is definitely not a panic situation. We’re already spoiled by SA and the thoughtfulness that went into the InterWorx mail system.
Thanks for your suggestion.
If you do SMTP level scanning you can do this via Iworx already.
System Services > Mail > SPAM Filtering ::
SMTP SPAM Score Threshold:
“Any email messages with a SPAM score higher than the threshold will be marked as SPAM and dealt with according to the set SPAM preferences.”
There currently is no way to do this at the SiteWorx level (on per domain basis). I have modified the maildrop script to allow me to drop mails at the SiteWorx Level* and not do any SMTP level scanning.
If you try to do the same you should make a backup of the original b/c if you mess something up with the maildrop script then you server will not deliver any emails and they will just go into a black hole so you wont even know you are missing any.
*I do not do it per domain but rather a global score that it will drop mail, but still done at the “vpopmail” part of the process.
For what its worth, a score of 5 has never seem to work very well, IMHO. I advise my users and my personal settings are in the low 2.x score area.
I’ve never liked Spam Assassin, I simply use it as a secondary way to idenitfy spam that somehow makes its way through my mailfoundry anti-spam appliance. If you can afford a mailfoundry, it is the absolute best way to remove the whole spam issue, only about 1 in 1000 spam e-mails can get through - and i’ve never experienced an issue with false positives. It’s extremely accurate - for smaller hosts, try EasyAt (www.easyat.com) which is $19.95/mo for up to 500,000 e-mails per server.