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Does Spamcop "learn" from my reporting


nora

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I think that you are talking about Bayesian filters. Those are filters that take reported spam and add its characteristics to the filter as 'spam-like', incoming email with those characteristics gets a higher spam score.

Since I don't have a spamcop email account, I can't answer with knowledge for what the email system does with a spam reported. That's an assumption that you are using spamcop email. I do know that email reported as spam is reported to the administrator of the source IP address via the spamcop reporting and parsing service. I don't know what else is done with it, if anything.

However, the way that spamcop 'learns' about spam is to count a report toward the spamcop blocklist. If enough reports are made (there is a complicated algorithym for deciding the threshhold of reports required for listing), then that IP address is added to the spamcop blocklist. When there are no more reports, the IP address is delisted.

Spamcop email is filtered and one of the filters used is the spamcop blocklist so your reports may have contributed to a listing - which could be construed as 'learning'.

However, I understand that there is an 'art' to tweaking your filters so that almost all of your spam goes to held mail to be reported. You might find more interesting discussion in the Spamcop Email part of the forum. There might be a section in the 'How to Use..' forum also on how to set up filters for the maximum effect.

HTH

Miss Betsy

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Since I don't have a spamcop email account, I can't answer with knowledge for what the email system does with a spam reported. That's an assumption that you are using spamcop email. I do know that email reported as spam is reported to the administrator of the source IP address via the spamcop reporting and parsing service. I don't know what else is done with it, if anything.

Reporting via the SC Email system is the same as other SC reporting. Only the originating IP address is reported. In that respect the SpamCop does learn (regardless of the type of user making the report) but not based on content in the message.

Andrew

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The filters used by the SpamCop Email Filtering Service do not learn from spam reporting. There is no connection of any kind between the filters and SpamCop reporting. The SpamAssassin filters are updated by SpamAssassin, not from any "learning" process locally.

The SpamCop reporting and blocking service doesn't "learn" in the "filtering" sense of the word, either. SpamCop doesn't decide what is or is not spam. Only the user can make that decision.

What SpamCop does do is remember which servers have been reported as a source of spam, and when the reports were filed. It uses that information to decide which servers should be on our blocking list.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

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The filters used by the SpamCop Email Filtering Service do not learn from spam reporting. There is no connection of any kind between the filters and SpamCop reporting. The SpamAssassin filters are updated by SpamAssassin, not from any "learning" process locally.

The SpamCop reporting and blocking service doesn't "learn" in the "filtering" sense of the word, either. SpamCop doesn't decide what is or is not spam. Only the user can make that decision.

What SpamCop does do is remember which servers have been reported as a source of spam, and when the reports were filed. It uses that information to decide which servers should be on our blocking list.

- Don D'Minion - SpamCop Admin -

Thank you for clarifying that the SpamAssassin filters are updated independently of any input from choices made by spamcop email users of email to report as spam.

I thought that the filters used by the spamcop email system were the spamcop blocklist and spamassassin. That may not be a direct connection to spamcop reporting, but it is a connection. I also thought that originally the spamcop blocklist concept was to identify IP addresses for you from which you had received spam until they no longer were sending spam. Now that there are lots of users the corollation between what spam you report and what is identified is no longer so tidy. However if you report spam, then the IP address could be added to the scbl and then 'recognized' by the spamcop email system as being on the scbl and sent to held mail. There are enough instances where that is not true so that it probably was not a good idea to suggest it. Sorry.

I am sorry that my explanation of how spamcop 'learns' or 'remembers' confused the technical mind, but thank you for clarifying that spamcop technically doesn't 'learn' in the 'filtering' sense of the word. If spamcop 'remembers' the source of spam based on what reporters choose to submit as spam, then non-technical minds think that it could be construed as 'learning' what has been reported even though it doesn't 'learn' the same facts about reported spam as Bayesian filters do.

Sorry, again, for being so technically unclear in my explanation.

Miss Betsy

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