Junk email options

[wc_chan]

Under the Junk Email Options, we can choose
- No automatic Filtering
- Low
- High
- Safe List Only

Would anybody tell me the filtering logic behind for option low and high?
Thanks
Brgds

 

[VanguardLH]

Under the Junk Email Options, we can choose
- No automatic Filtering
- Low
- High
- Safe List Only

Would anybody tell me the filtering logic behind for option low and high?
Thanks
Brgds

Trying to figure out how to circumvent Outlook's filtering with your spam
mails perhaps? Users don't need to know the "how". If they get too many
false positives, they move from High to Low. If they are getting too many
false negatives and are willing to accept more false positives, they move
from Low to High.

Despite all of Microsoft's paragraphs to describe their junk filter scheme
without actually identifying it, it's just another Bayes scheme that guesses
the ham/spam rating of a message based on keywords that are stored in a
databased. Low and High probably are nothing more than specifying a
threshold at which a message gets tagged as spam, like 90% being Low and 70%
being High. If you want to learn more about how Bayes weighting of keywords
works, do a Google on Paul Graham and Bayes. While other Bayesian filters
are highly configurable, you get almost no configurability with Microsoft's
implementation. You don't even get to build a database based on your own
history of ham and spam but instead get an junk filter update from Microsoft
once per month based on an aggregate of OTHER users historical experience
with spam.

 

[wc_chan]

Thanks for the answer. However, as a IT support guy, our bosses will always
ask why their mails are spammed and sometimes they insist to know the exact
algorithm. I search microsoft sites and couldn't find any useful at the
moment. Can any microsoft expertise give us some clue?
Brgds

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

Thanks for the answer. However, as a IT support guy, our bosses will always
ask why their mails are spammed and sometimes they insist to know the exact
algorithm. I search microsoft sites and couldn't find any useful at the
moment. Can any microsoft expertise give us some clue?

Microsoft doesn't make the information available.

 

[VanguardLH]

Thanks for the answer. However, as a IT support guy, our bosses will always
ask why their mails are spammed and sometimes they insist to know the exact
algorithm. I search microsoft sites and couldn't find any useful at the
moment. Can any microsoft expertise give us some clue?

Except for open-source anti-spam software, you really expected any author of
proprietary software to divulge its inner workings, especially so spammers
could use that information to thwart that particular anti-spam solution?
Does your company produce software? If so, do they also release the
Functional Spec (for design) and Engineering Spec (for QA testing) to their
customers? No, they give the customer an user manual.

Try calling your own ISP as see if they will divulge the exact algorithms
they employ to block spam. Obviously that information could be used to
thwart their scheme if it were known in detail.

Why does your company even bother with the Junk Filter in Outlook? That is
a guessing scheme based on Bayes weighting of keywords and, for Outlook,
uses a database that is NOT based on the user's personal history of e-mails
but on a sampling that Microsoft decides to push out once per month to their
Outlook users. If this is for a company, the spam solution should be
implemented up on the company's mail server, not at the clients. Because
all e-mails transferred by the company's mail server should be considered
important, company workstations should have the Junk Filter option disabled
in Outlook along with those workstations not employing any other anti-spam
solution. As far as the company is concerned, all e-mails delivered by the
company's mail server are important to their employees. Filtering should be
done up at the mail server.