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  <id>tag:www.barbarafeldman.com,2008://1/tag:www.barbarafeldman.com,2003://1.46-</id>
  <updated>2008-10-29T17:05:17Z</updated>
  <title>Comments for The Joys of Spam Filters</title>
<subtitle>Welcome to my office.  I am Barbara J. Feldman, syndicated newspaper columnist, online publisher, author, mother, wife and Net surfer supreme (not listed
in order of importance, of course).</subtitle>
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  <entry>
    <id>tag:www.barbarafeldman.com,2003://1.46</id>
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    <link rel="service.edit" type="application/atom+xml" href="http://www.barbarafeldman.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-atom.cgi/weblog/blog_id=1/entry_id=46" title="The Joys of Spam Filters" />
    <published>2003-05-21T19:04:31Z</published>
    <updated>2007-02-27T23:53:12Z</updated>
    <title>The Joys of Spam Filters</title>
    <summary>Dave Taylor (of Intuitive.com and MicroURL.com) just emailed me that this morning&apos;s HTML Surfnetkids newsletter tripped his spam filters with the following message: X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=6.9 required=5.0 X-Spam-Report: 6.90 hits,...</summary>
    <author>
      <name></name>
      <uri>http://www.surfnetkids.com</uri>
    </author>
    
    <category term="Newsletter Publishing" />
    
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      <![CDATA[<p>Dave Taylor (of  <a href="http://intuitive.com">Intuitive.com</a> and <a href="http://microurl.com">MicroURL.com</a>) just emailed me that this morning's HTML Surfnetkids newsletter tripped his spam filters with the following message:</p>

<p>X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=6.9 required=5.0<br />
X-Spam-Report:   6.90 hits, 5 required;<br />
  *  0.6 -- BODY: One hundred percent guaranteed<br />
  *  0.3 -- BODY: No such thing as a free lunch (1)<br />
  *  0.3 -- BODY: Satisfaction Guaranteed<br />
  *  0.3 -- BODY: Asks you to click below<br />
  *  0.2 -- BODY: Sign up Free Today<br />
  *  0.1 -- BODY: Free Trial<br />
  *  0.1 -- BODY: Contains 'Dear Somebody'<br />
-------->>>  *  3.0 -- BODY: Image tag with an ID code to identify you<br />
  *  1.1 -- BODY: Spam phrases score is 03 to 05 (medium)<br />
            [score: 3]<br />
  *  0.3 -- BODY: HTML font color is red<br />
  *  0.2 -- BODY: A WHOLE LINE OF YELLING DETECTED<br />
  *  0.2 -- BODY: Includes a URL link to send an email<br />
  * -0.2 -- Mailing list headers are suspicious<br />
  *  0.4 -- HTML-only mail, with no text version</p>

<p>The biggest problem (the 3 pointer annotated with ----->>>) was an advertiser's image and linking URL that contains "?id=1042&amp;sub=Q3C036".  (Note to self... remember to check advertisers'  URLs for spamminess.) </p>

<p>Interestingly enough, when I used <a href="http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker/">Lyris Content Checker</a> (which uses Spam Assassin) the same message only rates a 3.3 --- which means it should have gotten through MOST filters.</p>

<p>Ah, the joys of email publishing!  In the future,  I'll be talking more and more about publishing and receiving content via <a href="http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/">RSS</a>.</p>

<p>BTW --- Dave also told me his new service <a href="http://microurl.com">MicroURL</a> could have avoided the spam filter  problem by creating a non-spammy URL.</p>

<p><br />
</p>]]>
      
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  <entry>
    <id>tag:www.barbarafeldman.com,2003://1.46-comment:61</id>
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    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.barbarafeldman.com/the_joys_of_spam_filters.html#c61" />
    <title>Comment from Dave Taylor on 2003-05-21</title>
    <author>
        <name>Dave Taylor</name>
        <uri>http://www.intuitive.com/blog/</uri>
    </author>
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.intuitive.com/blog/">
        <![CDATA[<p>Mea culpa. I have certain spam things that I give a high score to:</p>

<p>score   WEB_BUGS                3.0<br />
score   NO_REAL_NAME            2.5    <br />
score   BASE64_ENC_TEXT         4.0 <br />
score   MISSING_HEADERS         2.0 <br />
score   MAY_BE_FORGED           2.5<br />
score   GAPPY_SUBJECT           2.5<br />
score   MSG_ID_ADDED_BY_MTA_3   2.5<br />
score   EXPECT_TO_EARN          2.0</p>

<p>I just want to have spam COMPLETELY removed from my mailbox. </p>]]>
    </content>
    <published>2003-05-21T20:09:12Z</published>
  </entry>

  <entry>
    <id>tag:www.barbarafeldman.com,2003://1.46-comment:60</id>
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    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.barbarafeldman.com/the_joys_of_spam_filters.html#c60" />
    <title>Comment from Barbara Feldman on 2003-05-21</title>
    <author>
        <name>Barbara Feldman</name>
        <uri>http://barbarafeldman.com</uri>
    </author>
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://barbarafeldman.com">
        <![CDATA[<p>I just checked the two Spam Assassin reports side-by-side and yours assigns 3 points to "Image tag with an ID code to identify you" while the Lyris Content Checker assigns .1 points.</p>

<p>Which just goes to show us that TRYING to be smart (and checking email content against one spam filter or another) ONLY gives us email publishers a FALSE sense of security.</p>]]>
    </content>
    <published>2003-05-21T19:40:01Z</published>
  </entry>

  <entry>
    <id>tag:www.barbarafeldman.com,2003://1.46-comment:59</id>
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    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.barbarafeldman.com/the_joys_of_spam_filters.html#c59" />
    <title>Comment from Dave Taylor on 2003-05-21</title>
    <author>
        <name>Dave Taylor</name>
        <uri>http://www.intuitive.com/blog/</uri>
    </author>
    <content type="html" xml:lang="en" xml:base="http://www.intuitive.com/blog/">
        <![CDATA[<p>Even more curious, Barbara, I too am running SpamAssassin, and that's where all those scores came from. :-)</p>]]>
    </content>
    <published>2003-05-21T19:29:08Z</published>
  </entry>

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