Spam filter annoyances

[dter]

I'm just wondering, do the "Report spam" and "Report non-spam" options actually do anything? Whatever spam filtering FastMail used a couple of years ago worked a hell of a lot better than what they use now. For every 200 spam messages, I end up finding 3-4 false positives and 5-10 (very obvious) false negatives. I always mark them with the appropriate options, but I still end up getting the same type of messages falsely marked positive or negative by the spam filter.

[Chipper]

I mention a similar issue in this thread.

[s a]

 
I recently asked Rob if FM had made any significant changes to their spam filter. Here's his response:

No, no changes on our end. However, we use a number of RBLs as part of our SpamAssassin scoring. RBLs rate the "spaminess" of the IPs email is received from. If an email is sent from a known "spammy" IP, then it will often be flagged highly by SA. If a spammer manages to find a "clean" IP and send a number of messages, then messages that appear exactly the same can get through the spam filter, while previously the same looking message didn't.

Unfortunately there's not much you can do about this. Usually when a "clean" IP is used, it very quickly ends up being listed, and so maybe a couple of hundred or thousand emails come from that IP before it's listed and starts being blocked.