high spamicity yet unsure?

[David Relson]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:03:40 -0300
Andreas Hasenack wrote:

> I got a spam in my inbox today with the following bogofilter classification:
> 
> X-Bogosity: Unsure, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.983563, version=0.95.2
> 
> Is this correct? I mean, why is it classified as unsure but still gets a high 
> spamicity?

Hello Andreas,

"bogofilter -Q" will show you all of bogofilter's parameters.  Of
particular relevance to this question are spam_cutoff and ham_cutoff as
they determine what bogofilter classifies as spam, ham, and unsure.

When we selected bogofilter's default parameters we thought it better
to set spam_cutoff to a high value (to reduce false positives) than to
a low value.  After all, it's better to get unwanted spam than it is to
lose wanted (and possibly very important) ham.

Of course, you can change bogofilter.cf to set a lower value of
spam_cutoff.  Doing that will cause more message to be classified as
spam and will increase the likelihood of a false positive.

HTH,

David