How to handle returned mail?

[David Relson]

At 08:08 AM 12/3/02, Joe D'Andrea wrote:

>Q: When email is returned to sender, is this bounce also added in to the
>wordlist hopper? Should it be exempt?
>
>I'm not sure what the most appropriate plan of attack is. For example, I
>just bounced several messages to uce at ftc.gov and the server happened to
>bounce them back (which usually never happens).
>
>Some of those bounces landed in my inbox, and others landed in my spambox!
>So now these messages also have elements of the original UCE. Hmm ...
>
>Do I remove them from both the spam and nospam wordlists? Just the nospam?
>Just the spam?
>
>- JD

Joe,

bogofilter can't currently do what you want.  Bogofilter's code has options 
'-s' and '-n' for adding messages to the word lists and it has options '-S' 
and '-N' for transferring a message from one list to the 
other.  Unfortunately, it does not have options for _removing_ a message's 
words from a word list.  The "transfer" options decrement token counts in 
one list and increment them in the other, but this ability is not 
accessible from the command line.

I tend not to worry too much about extra messages being added to the spam 
list or the good list.  I don't _like_ it when that happens, but I don't 
think it's a big cause of concern.  When a message has been added to the 
wrong list, the message's tokens will have counts that are a bit higher 
than they should be.  Since bogofilter looks at _all_ the words of a 
message, if a few have incorrect counts their effect on the spamicity score 
will be a small effect.

I hope this helps.

David