Reporting SPAM Filter Issues

  • Thread starter Thread starter Johnnie
  • Start date Start date
J

Johnnie

How do I provide feedback to Microsoft on email that Outlook's filter fails to
detect?
 
Johnnie said:
How do I provide feedback to Microsoft on email that Outlook's filter
fails to
detect?
Click to expand...


They probably use feedback from user Hotmail users hitting the Spam button.
Don't expect them to bother with feedback on how to improve their Bayesian
filter. Find better anti-spam solutions. Spampal is free
(www.spampal.org).
 
They probably use feedback from user Hotmail users hitting the Spam
button. Don't expect them to bother with feedback on how to improve their
Bayesian filter. Find better anti-spam solutions. Spampal is free
(www.spampal.org).
Click to expand...

No probably about it... they have a select group of people involved in spam
reporting and it gives them all the spam they have time to review. If it
doesn't meet your needs, try a filter you can train - there are several
other free decent ones besides spampal.
 
Diane Poremsky said:
No probably about it... they have a select group of people involved in
spam reporting and it gives them all the spam they have time to review. If
it doesn't meet your needs, try a filter you can train - there are several
other free decent ones besides spampal.
Click to expand...

The Bayesian filter in SpamPal is far more trainable than the one in OL2003
(which comes with a preset list which does NOT represent a particular users
experience with spam but is a generic list from many users). You can add
words. You can change weighting. You can configure how new words are
weighted. You can configure a noise level after which the expired words are
removed. You can easily change a word from good to bad or visa versa. You
can import a list of good mails to pre-train the database as to which mails
are good, and the same for import a set of bad mails to pre-train for spam.
Does OL2003 provide pre-training import? SpamBayes is another Bayesian
filter but I haven't used it to know how configurable it is. Bayesian
should also NOT be the only method by which you rank the spamminess of
mails.

Basically the OP said that Hotmail's spam filtering was unsatisfactory. I
only gave *one* example of a far better alternative to eliminate spam.
There are several. I prefer one that has multiple schemes of detecting
spam. The user needs to trial several solutions to see what is best for
them. However, none provide the magic bullet against spam (and neither does
the challenge-response, especially due to its "challenge spam" spewed at
innocents and because of the ability to turn a C-R user into a spammer).
 
Outlook's filter is not trainable at all - this is because many people won't
bother training it after the initial setup and Microsoft wanted to make it
simple to use - which means, if it's not meeting the users needs, they need
to try a different filter.
 
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