Celeste Spam Howto wanted ;)

Hi all,
 I am working on Celeste Source code, to upgrade it and add some new
functionality.
I'd like to add  small tutorials on celeste on my web site.
The Celeste section is born yesterday, but you can take a look to:
http://blog.objectsroot.com/celeste

I'd like to get some documentation about the spam filter.
How does  it work?
Do you need to train it marking the emails as spam and then it will do
the job for you?


--
Software Architect
http://www.objectsroot.com/
Software is nothing

Hi!

"Giovanni Giorgi" <[hidden email]> wrote:
Yes, there is a an extra button called "Spam". Just click it and the
email is moved to .spam." Celeste maintains two word sets - one with
"good" words, and one with "bad" words. I am using a deadly old Celeste
in a 3.2 image and I might even have tweaked the spam code - saving the
db can take a bit of time as it serializes these word sets.

Then you regularly empty the .spam. category - you don't need to keep
them.

It has worked very well for me until lately where some spam seem to been
able to trick it by using lots of "good words".

regards, Göran

"Giovanni Giorgi" <[hidden email]> writes:
> I'd like to get some documentation about the spam filter.
> How does  it work?
> Do you need to train it marking the emails as spam and then it will do
> the job for you?

Goran described it well. I used it for a long time (> 1 year) and was
generally happy with it.

However, I should say that I think there is a better approach
nowadays: filter on your mail server, using something like
SpamAssassin.  The main reason is that you filter the spams out before
you download them.  That way, you do not spend a lot of time
downloading messages that are immediately tossed into the spam folder.



-Lex

Hm.  I would advise against that.  I have been doing precisely that  
for the past year, and in the last couple of months found that  
SpamAssassin generated ridiculous quantities of false positives.  
(150 emails incorrectly classified as spam out of about 2500 spams.)

I have gone back to filtering on my mac Mail client.  More mail is  
popped, but I do not lose anything.

Nothing to do with squeak, but ...

Oscar

On Aug 18, 2006, at 16:42, Lex Spoon wrote:

> However, I should say that I think there is a better approach
> nowadays: filter on your mail server, using something like
> SpamAssassin.  The main reason is that you filter the spams out before
> you download them.  That way, you do not spend a lot of time
> downloading messages that are immediately tossed into the spam folder.

Spamming filtering is not an easy problem.
Most users prefer doing filtering on theri box.
For example my Telecom provider started to "offer" me an automatic
anti-spam, WITHOUT saying a word about this new services.

Some of my emails was lost thank of this "great idea".

Provider anti spam should avoid false positive: for example using
somehing like spam razor.

Spam Assasin is a good helper for self spamming detection on private
pc, for example customizing some rules.

I am not planning to enhance Celeste anti-spam in the near future, but
an integration with spam razor can be interesting to explore


On 8/18/06, Oscar Nierstrasz <[hidden email]> wrote:

--
Software Architect
http://www.objectsroot.com/
Software is nothing

"Giovanni Giorgi" <[hidden email]> writes:
> Spamming filtering is not an easy problem.
> Most users prefer doing filtering on theri box.
> For example my Telecom provider started to "offer" me an automatic
> anti-spam, WITHOUT saying a word about this new services.
>
> Some of my emails was lost thank of this "great idea".

Heh, lovely -- ISP's who know so much better than you they do not even
need to bother telling you what they are doing.

Still, I find my emailing faster and more pleasant now that I started
filtering on the server.  The false positives have not changed.  What
has changed is that most email downloads are much faster, and I do not
have to do a "compact" as often to get rid of all the spams.  On the
downside, when I do have a false positive, I have to retrieve it off
of the server instead of out of the .spam folder.  That is not a big
deal compared to avoiding downloading all of the true spams.


-Lex

Il giorno lun, 21/08/2006 alle 10.08 +0200, Lex Spoon ha scritto:
Heh. If, like me, he's a customer of the main Italian ISP, then this
isn't the worst thing they've ever done. And nonetheless they're still
better than their competitors.

> Still, I find my emailing faster and more pleasant now that I started
> filtering on the server.  The false positives have not changed.  What
> has changed is that most email downloads are much faster, and I do not
> have to do a "compact" as often to get rid of all the spams.  On the
> downside, when I do have a false positive, I have to retrieve it off
> of the server instead of out of the .spam folder.  That is not a big
> deal compared to avoiding downloading all of the true spams.

I have a spam filter on my server which is very aggressive in
identifying spam, but I set it to only delete what clearly is spam. This
means that some of the messages I download end immediately in the spam
folder, though.

        Giovanni