123-reg spam filter

I am trying to get my head around 123-reg's spam filter, but I think they have made a logic error.

Firstly, their spam settings page: http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/3830/clipboard01ba.png

As I understand it, incoming mail is given a spam score, the higher the score, the more likely it is spam. This appears to be backed up by the line saying the higher you set the spam threshold, the more "spam-like" the message has to be to get flagged/deleted (i.e. the spam filter will be weaker).

But here's the problem. By default, emails are deleted when they reach a spam threshold of 4 and above, and they are flagged when they reach a threshold of 5 and above. Under these settings, spam will always be deleted before it is flagged, which defeats the whole point of having two thresholds. Not only that, but the system will refuse to allow you to even set the spam threshold for flagging below that of deleting.

It makes me wonder if the person who set this up got completely confused, which is worrying as having spam filters set too high results in false positives and lost mail.

Any thoughts on this?

I turned off my ISP's spam filter and just handle it myself.

Turning off the 123-reg spam filter seems like a good idea as it's a mess. Unfortunately though, there's no "off switch".

To me it says 1 is definite spam, 10 is unlikey to be spam, i.e. the reverse of most spam ranking software which ranks spam e-mails high and non-spam low.

Hi

I work on behalf of 123-reg.

If you wish to switch the spam filter to the weakest settings so that emails are not blocked please set your spam filter settings to 9 and 10.

How do I edit the spam filter on my mailbox/email forwarding?
http://123-support.co.uk/support/answers/how-do-i-ed...


Regards,

Ricky

In reply to a post by webfusion:

If you wish to switch the spam filter to the weakest settings so that emails are not blocked please set your spam filter settings to 9 and 10.

If setting the threshold to 10 is the weakest setting, then that implies emails must get a spam score of 10 or over in order to get flagged. If that's the case, how is it possible for this to happen if emails with a spam score of 9 and over are deleted?

If I am not understanding the process correctly, please provide a full description of how email is spam scored, and how this relates to the spam settings in the control panel, because it's just plain confusing now.

They rank low numbers as more likely to be spam than high numbers. It's different from some other systems but it's understandable.

Just mentally subtract their numbers from 11 if it helps.

Ok, so a spam score of 0 is probably spam, and a spam score of 10 is probably not spam. In this case, on the default settings, spam scores of 4 and under are deleted, and 5 and under are flagged. That works.

Now, we've been advised that setting the spam filter to 9 or 10 is the weakest filter setting. However, if we are working on that basis, setting 9 or 10 would delete or flag everything with a score of 9 or 10 and below, i.e. pretty much most email.

Ricky,

Please could you respond to my questions in my thread? Specifically, if emails which are probably spam are given a score of 1, how can setting the spam filter to delete emails scored 9 and under be the weakest setting?

Hi Oliver,

The scoring of email if spam / not spam is taken care by our servers and not through the setting via the control panel.

If you want the least detection and want to handle whether email is spam or not then set the spam setting to 9 and 10.

If you want a a higher detection and do not want to see or manage spam then you can set the spam setting to 4 and 5.

We agree with your point that it doesn't make sense to be able to set the flag threshold greater than the delete threshold.

123-reg will be updating our spam filtering feature in the coming months to ensure that the options are more detailed and less confusing in the next couple of months.

Thank you for your feedback.

If you have any specific problems with email please raise a support ticket via www.123-support.co.uk


Regards,

Ricky