After very little... lots of spam - How about you? system ok?

1611mac · 14 Feb 2014, 11:26 PM

FastMail spam filters and Bayes learning as done WONDERS for my account which used to get hundreds of spam a day. Bayes has learned 8242 spam and I was down to seing almost none (spam on "agressive" setting), but now, over the past week I've seen a sharp spike in spam received (passed). I verified that spam learning is running each day on my learning folder. Setup and everything seems OK.

I guess I'm just making sure this sharp rise in spam is an anomaly and no one else is having problems, ie, the spam and bayes systems are working ok as well as your spam setting ("normal" vs "agressive")

What I'm seeing is almost as if I had changed my spam setting from "aggressive" to "normal." (but spam setting does show "aggressive.")

Does your spam settings/system seem to be working normally for you?

janusz · 14 Feb 2014, 11:38 PM

My account has always been pretty spam-free (very little spam in Junk Mail, virtually none in Inbox). May be there were tons of junk rejected by some invisible filters, not reaching my mailbox(es) at all. My spam protection setting is Custom.
To sum up: I see no spam rise.

May be this has something to do with my being rather careful with my FM address, and not splashing it all over the internet.

1611mac · 14 Feb 2014, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janusz

snip

May be this has something to do with my being rather careful with my FM address, and not splashing it all over the internet.

Yes I agree. But on some accounts there is no option. This email address is associated for an opt-in newsletter where we WANT it splashed all over the internet! We don't use Fastmail to send the emails but the address is in the email as contact info.

The issue was not the receiving of spam.... but the sudden rise in spam. I am very happy with how FastMail kills most of it. I give FastMail a rating of 12 on a scale of ten! I just want to ensure it's systems are working as normal...

somdcomputerguy · 15 Feb 2014, 12:09 AM

spam, be it email or forum or of any physical or digital form, has it's own kind of current. Sometimes big waves, sometimes little waves, sometimes no waves. It always has, and always will be there though. That previous sentence is a slightly modified Star Trek movie quote.

You know, I have found this DEA service - http://spamgourmet.com/, very helpful in my anti-spam email fight.

- Bruce

n5bb · 15 Feb 2014, 11:39 AM

Are these spam messages showing up in your Inbox or Spam folder?

Look at the X-Spam-hits header and be sure that BAYES_USED is set to user. Then look at the spam score for these messages (the X-Spam-score header). The Aggressive spam setting does the following:

Messages with spam scores >= 10 are discarded
Messages with spam scores >= 4 are moved to the Spam (Junk Mail) folder and the subject is marked with the spam score

I use the Custom spam setting, set as follows. I only recommend this if you are using address book whitelisting (good addresses kept in your online address book) and user Bayes filtering:

Messages with spam scores >=8 are discarded
Messages with spam scores >=2 are are moved to the Spam (Junk Mail) folder and the subject is marked with the spam score

It's extremely rare for me to get a false positive (good message in the Spam folder), and it's always on a new sender address (because I use address book whitelisting).

As Bruce said, the spamming activity tends to come in waves. User addresses are sold by crime organizations and thousands of zombie senders are used to flood our email accounts with spam. It's possible that 25 spammers bought your address and are using 500 zombie PC's to send messages to you and others. The email content might be completely different, even though the same spammer is controlling the zombie system. You should expect the spam load to have huge spikes from time to time. But usually the load returns to a dull roar in a few days.

Bill

kijinbear · 15 Feb 2014, 12:51 PM

FastMail is VERY good at rejecting obvious spam as well as detecting the few that actually get through.

My email address is posted all over the place, mostly because I make open-source software and it's impossible to avoid my email address getting into commit messages and mailing lists that are all publicly available.

Despite the above, I usually get only about 10 spam per month in my FastMail account, and 7-9 of them go straight to the spam folder without ever hitting my Inbox. Occasionally there's a false positive or a false negative, but once I train the Bayes filter by moving them to the correct folder (spam to Spam and ham to Inbox), the filter never makes the same mistake again.

Bahb · 19 Feb 2014, 02:32 AM

I came here today to see if anyone else is suddenly getting lots of spam. So I am not the only one! I used to get maybe 2 a month. Now I am getting more than 2 every day. I know, that's not a ton but annoying anyway because my sole reason for staying with Fastmail has been their ability to keep me spam-free.

Changes always seem to happen on weekends. Is that significant?

1611mac · 19 Feb 2014, 02:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by n5bb

Are these spam messages showing up in your Inbox or Spam folder?

-snip-

Bill

The spam is low scored (under 5) and coming into my in box. My point is that this low scoring spam had pretty much been eliminated once Bayes got to working on it. Again, it is as though my Bayes learning is turned off... yet I can see that it is running it's learning job each evening. I was getting almost ZERO spam.... now I'm back to getting 20 or more a day.

SteveMetro · 19 Feb 2014, 01:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bahb

I came here today to see if anyone else is suddenly getting lots of spam. So I am not the only one! I used to get maybe 2 a month. Now I am getting more than 2 every day.

Ditto. Me too. I got more spam today than I have in the last three months total. What's changed?

brong · 19 Feb 2014, 01:44 PM

SpamAssassin auto-updates shipped a BAYES_999 rule with the default score of 1.0 rather than a higher score.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...n/users/183433

The amount of backpeddling and justification in the thread is impressive... it amounts to "we screwed up".

Caught us by surprise, same as everyone else.

We've added an explicit score of 5.0 for BAYES_999 in our scores now, which should be even more aggressive than the defaults that others have proposed out there. 99.9% sure is very sure.

So apologies for the mis-scored emails. I've rolled out the fix to all servers now, so future email should be scored correctly.

1611mac · 19 Feb 2014, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brong

SpamAssassin auto-updates shipped a BAYES_999 rule with the default score of 1.0 rather than a higher score.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...n/users/183433

The amount of backpeddling and justification in the thread is impressive... it amounts to "we screwed up".

Caught us by surprise, same as everyone else.

We've added an explicit score of 5.0 for BAYES_999 in our scores now, which should be even more aggressive than the defaults that others have proposed out there. 99.9% sure is very sure.

So apologies for the mis-scored emails. I've rolled out the fix to all servers now, so future email should be scored correctly.

THANK YOU. I knew I wasn't crazy. I actually saw the issue on the spam-assassin user forum but I did not realize you would have auto-updates on. Thanks for the info. I appreciate the honest explanation. I love FastMail and recommend it!

ioneja · 4 Mar 2014, 11:14 PM

Maybe my problem is related to the issues in this thread -- I've noticed the increase in spam, which has not abated since brong indicated that he rolled out a fix, but I am also wondering about personal Bayes filter performance, false positives, etc....

Here's what I wrote in another thread, before CyberDyne pointed me over to this thread here. (I've asked my other thread to be deleted by the mods):

----

Hi All -- Wondering if any of you have noticed an increase in spam lately... seems like there's more coming in, and making it through to the inbox.

Not only that, but I'm starting to wonder how well the personal Bayes filter database is working lately too. I've had a few more false positives lately, which is very frustrating since I'm pretty careful about marking the right ones as spam or not spam. Also, I keep on marking some types of emails as spam (so the Bayes database should be updated), but similar messages keep on showing up in the inbox... almost as if the personal Bayes database isn't weighted very strongly or maybe not updating properly. Anyone else?

Just not sure if this is a wider issue, or maybe just my account(s)? And BTW, this seems to be happening to one of my clients too (that I brought over to FM) that has complained that too much spam is coming in for his FM account too.

drew · 5 Mar 2014, 05:31 AM

Edit after reding Brom.

My naibe question. Could my almost NIL spam
be explained that way. I email so seldom that
the amount of Spam is directly related to my low
activity sending from the account. I know too few
to write emails to

Back to old text

This topic comes up now and then.
I get surprised each time. Is it that

I am economically too poor to be a target.

The Spammers may have a list over
people that click on links?

What else can explain that others
have lot of Spam and I have none at all.

My Fastmail email address is not hidden
the Spammer much have it because some
email providers do send me some spam

I am a FM guest account could that explain it.

I mean you guys on pay have a filter setting
that is way to advanced for me to grasp.

Remark I don't accuse you to have set filters incorrect
at all.

Just a friendly suggestion from somebody knowing absolutely nothing about spam filters.

I love my free account and log in at least two times aday.

Do you maybe do IMAP and me only webmail access?

Could such differences explain the difference

or is it that I live in Sweden and that is a too small market
for spam? I am too old or live in wrong place???

randian · 5 Mar 2014, 05:44 AM

I only get spam on addresses that match my first name or are dictionary words. I'd bet that most Apple-related terms get spammed at Fastmail's mymacmail.com domain.

1611mac · 5 Mar 2014, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ioneja

Maybe my problem is related to the issues in this thread -- I've noticed the increase in spam, which has not abated since brong indicated that he rolled out a fix, but I am also wondering about personal Bayes filter performance, false positives, etc....

Here's what I wrote in another thread, before CyberDyne pointed me over to this thread here. (I've asked my other thread to be deleted by the mods):

----

Hi All -- Wondering if any of you have noticed an increase in spam lately... seems like there's more coming in, and making it through to the inbox.

Not only that, but I'm starting to wonder how well the personal Bayes filter database is working lately too. I've had a few more false positives lately, which is very frustrating since I'm pretty careful about marking the right ones as spam or not spam. Also, I keep on marking some types of emails as spam (so the Bayes database should be updated), but similar messages keep on showing up in the inbox... almost as if the personal Bayes database isn't weighted very strongly or maybe not updating properly. Anyone else?

Just not sure if this is a wider issue, or maybe just my account(s)? And BTW, this seems to be happening to one of my clients too (that I brought over to FM) that has complained that too much spam is coming in for his FM account too.

Hi, Once Bayes started training again my spam started going down to nothing again. I trust you have checked to make sure that everything is setup correctly (prefer folders setup as "train as spam" and "train as non-spam" and that the training count is in fact incrementing....

14 Feb 2014, 11:26 PM	#1
1611mac Member Join Date: Aug 2013 Posts: 41	After very little... lots of spam - How about you? system ok? FastMail spam filters and Bayes learning as done WONDERS for my account which used to get hundreds of spam a day. Bayes has learned 8242 spam and I was down to seing almost none (spam on "agressive" setting), but now, over the past week I've seen a sharp spike in spam received (passed). I verified that spam learning is running each day on my learning folder. Setup and everything seems OK. I guess I'm just making sure this sharp rise in spam is an anomaly and no one else is having problems, ie, the spam and bayes systems are working ok as well as your spam setting ("normal" vs "agressive") What I'm seeing is almost as if I had changed my spam setting from "aggressive" to "normal." (but spam setting does show "aggressive.") Does your spam settings/system seem to be working normally for you?

15 Feb 2014, 12:09 AM	#4
somdcomputerguy Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Rupert, WV Posts: 879	spam, be it email or forum or of any physical or digital form, has it's own kind of current. Sometimes big waves, sometimes little waves, sometimes no waves. It always has, and always will be there though. That previous sentence is a slightly modified Star Trek movie quote. You know, I have found this DEA service - http://spamgourmet.com/, very helpful in my anti-spam email fight. - Bruce Last edited by somdcomputerguy : 19 Feb 2014 at 02:37 AM. Reason: added: be it

15 Feb 2014, 11:39 AM	#5
n5bb Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: May 2004 Location: Irving, Texas Posts: 8,926	Are these spam messages showing up in your Inbox or Spam folder? Look at the X-Spam-hits header and be sure that BAYES_USED is set to user. Then look at the spam score for these messages (the X-Spam-score header). The Aggressive spam setting does the following: Messages with spam scores >= 10 are discarded Messages with spam scores >= 4 are moved to the Spam (Junk Mail) folder and the subject is marked with the spam score I use the Custom spam setting, set as follows. *I only recommend this if you are using address book whitelisting (good addresses kept in your online address book) and user Bayes filtering:* Messages with spam scores >=8 are discarded Messages with spam scores >=2 are are moved to the Spam (Junk Mail) folder and the subject is marked with the spam score It's extremely rare for me to get a false positive (good message in the Spam folder), and it's always on a new sender address (because I use address book whitelisting). As Bruce said, the spamming activity tends to come in waves. User addresses are sold by crime organizations and thousands of zombie senders are used to flood our email accounts with spam. It's possible that 25 spammers bought your address and are using 500 zombie PC's to send messages to you and others. The email content might be completely different, even though the same spammer is controlling the zombie system. You should expect the spam load to have huge spikes from time to time. But usually the load returns to a dull roar in a few days. Bill

5 Mar 2014, 05:31 AM	#13
drew The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 2,626	Edit after reding Brom. My naibe question. Could my almost NIL spam be explained that way. I email so seldom that the amount of Spam is directly related to my low activity sending from the account. I know too few to write emails to Back to old text This topic comes up now and then. I get surprised each time. Is it that I am economically too poor to be a target. The Spammers may have a list over people that click on links? What else can explain that others have lot of Spam and I have none at all. My Fastmail email address is not hidden the Spammer much have it because some email providers do send me some spam I am a FM guest account could that explain it. I mean you guys on pay have a filter setting that is way to advanced for me to grasp. Remark I don't accuse you to have set filters incorrect at all. Just a friendly suggestion from somebody knowing absolutely nothing about spam filters. I love my free account and log in at least two times aday. Do you maybe do IMAP and me only webmail access? Could such differences explain the difference or is it that I live in Sweden and that is a too small market for spam? I am too old or live in wrong place??? Last edited by drew : 5 Mar 2014 at 09:12 AM.

14 Feb 2014, 11:38 PM	#2
janusz The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: EU Posts: 4,944	My account has always been pretty spam-free (very little spam in Junk Mail, virtually none in Inbox). May be there were tons of junk rejected by some invisible filters, not reaching my mailbox(es) at all. My spam protection setting is Custom. To sum up: I see no spam rise. May be this has something to do with my being rather careful with my FM address, and not splashing it all over the internet.

15 Feb 2014, 12:51 PM	#6
kijinbear Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: ~$ Posts: 652	FastMail is VERY good at rejecting obvious spam as well as detecting the few that actually get through. My email address is posted all over the place, mostly because I make open-source software and it's impossible to avoid my email address getting into commit messages and mailing lists that are all publicly available. Despite the above, I usually get only about 10 spam per month in my FastMail account, and 7-9 of them go straight to the spam folder without ever hitting my Inbox. Occasionally there's a false positive or a false negative, but once I train the Bayes filter by moving them to the correct folder (spam to Spam and ham to Inbox), the filter never makes the same mistake again.

19 Feb 2014, 02:32 AM	#7
Bahb Essential Contributor Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: California Posts: 310	I came here today to see if anyone else is suddenly getting lots of spam. So I am not the only one! I used to get maybe 2 a month. Now I am getting more than 2 every day. I know, that's not a ton but annoying anyway because my sole reason for staying with Fastmail has been their ability to keep me spam-free. Changes always seem to happen on weekends. Is that significant?

19 Feb 2014, 01:44 PM	#10
brong The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 2,696 Representative of: Fastmail.fm	SpamAssassin auto-updates shipped a BAYES_999 rule with the default score of 1.0 rather than a higher score. http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...n/users/183433 The amount of backpeddling and justification in the thread is impressive... it amounts to "we screwed up". Caught us by surprise, same as everyone else. We've added an explicit score of 5.0 for BAYES_999 in our scores now, which should be even more aggressive than the defaults that others have proposed out there. 99.9% sure is very sure. So apologies for the mis-scored emails. I've rolled out the fix to all servers now, so future email should be scored correctly.

4 Mar 2014, 11:14 PM	#12
ioneja Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2011 Posts: 713	Maybe my problem is related to the issues in this thread -- I've noticed the increase in spam, which has not abated since brong indicated that he rolled out a fix, but I am also wondering about personal Bayes filter performance, false positives, etc.... Here's what I wrote in another thread, before CyberDyne pointed me over to this thread here. (I've asked my other thread to be deleted by the mods): ---- Hi All -- Wondering if any of you have noticed an increase in spam lately... seems like there's more coming in, and making it through to the inbox. Not only that, but I'm starting to wonder how well the personal Bayes filter database is working lately too. I've had a few more false positives lately, which is very frustrating since I'm pretty careful about marking the right ones as spam or not spam. Also, I keep on marking some types of emails as spam (so the Bayes database should be updated), but similar messages keep on showing up in the inbox... almost as if the personal Bayes database isn't weighted very strongly or maybe not updating properly. Anyone else? Just not sure if this is a wider issue, or maybe just my account(s)? And BTW, this seems to be happening to one of my clients too (that I brought over to FM) that has complained that too much spam is coming in for his FM account too.

5 Mar 2014, 05:44 AM	#14
randian Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2014 Posts: 561	I only get spam on addresses that match my first name or are dictionary words. I'd bet that most Apple-related terms get spammed at Fastmail's mymacmail.com domain.