678960 - Unchecked trusting spamassassin seems to be ignored

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 660919

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Christoph Siefer]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110628 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.18
Build ID: 20110628230241

Steps to reproduce:

Our mailserver is configured with spam assassin and some of the eMails sent by our customers are (by mistake) marked as spam.

I am using 

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110617 Thunderbird/3.1.11

on Ubuntu 10.3.183.4-0lucid1

As spam assassin falsely marked some eMails as spam, I tried to configure the senders as "trusted" via the trust addressbooks option.

Then I configured TB not to trust any spam-headers, because I was not able to pre-filter some senders as trustworthy via the "trust addressbooks" option.

After all of the messages had still beeing moved to the junk folder, I classified them as "spam" (no un-classifing button was presented, so I had to classify as "spam" first), then un-classified them as "no spam".


Actual results:

The eMails sent by trusted senders (listed in my addressbook) are still moved automatically to the junk-folder. No "No Spam"-Button appears when opening them in the reader.

Trust adressbooks is set, trust junk-headers is unset.


Expected results:

If configure so, the addressbook should be asked before junking them messages, regardless of the spam-headers anyone added on the way.

If I do not check "trust spam assassin", no action must be taken based on the spam-headers.

After 10 times unclassifing them mesages, TB should learn they are trusted.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is your issue perhaps one of these?
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?type1-0-0=substring&list_id=1146885&short_desc=junk%20whitelist&field0-0-0=short_desc&type0-0-1=substring&field0-0-1=keywords&type1-0-1=allwordssubstr&classification=Client%20Software&classification=Components&chfieldto=Now&query_format=advanced&chfieldfrom=12d&short_desc_type=anywordssubstr&type0-0-0=anywordssubstr&field1-0-0=short_desc&product=MailNews%20Core&product=Thunderbird&field1-0-1=short_desc

Comment 2

[Christoph Siefer]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #1)
> is your issue perhaps one of these?
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?type1-0-
> 0=substring&list_id=1146885&short_desc=junk%20whitelist&field0-0-
> 0=short_desc&type0-0-1=substring&field0-0-1=keywords&type1-0-
> 1=allwordssubstr&classification=Client%20Software&classification=Components&c
> hfieldto=Now&query_format=advanced&chfieldfrom=12d&short_desc_type=anywordssu
> bstr&type0-0-0=anywordssubstr&field1-0-
> 0=short_desc&product=MailNews%20Core&product=Thunderbird&field1-0-
> 1=short_desc

hello Wayne,

nope. My problem is, that nothing can stop TB from trusting spam-assassin (trusting is unchecked). I tried to use a filter to grab some mails before the junking happens, but this also does not work (filters should work before the junk controls?)

Even your mail was classified [spam] by spam-assassin, and TB trashed it to the junk folder. I have to scan it manually everytime, very annoying.

I would like to trust SA, if I only could define some exceptions by filtering.

Comment 3

[Christoph Siefer]

Please, can anybody tell about the order, in which filtering/junking is processed? I assumed the positive filtering (like "trust all my addressbook", "put all mails from xyz to folder XYZ"...) to be processed _before_ any junking, was that a fallacy? 

Fact is, as soon as Spam-Assassin has marked an email as "[spam]" (I don't know if the header or the updated subject is relevant), TB junks it, regardless of _any_ other rules beeing set up.

Settings:

- junk-filters: On
- trust my adressbooks: all
- trust serverside filtering: none

- a filter is set to move incomming mails of sender xyz to folder "XYZ"

- sender xyz is in my addressbook

Effekt: a "[spam]" marked email from xyz goes to junk, anyways. 

I use TB for my business mailing, missing important emails is very critical to me (sorry about the whining).

Comment 4

[Christoph Siefer]

Anything here? The issue is still present with Thunderbird 17.0

Again: If anything comes in marked as [Spam], I do not have a chance to prevent TB from junking it - nor by unchecking "trust extenal spamfilters", neither by filtering the sender into a folder.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

When you change the "trust externall spamfilters" setting, either on or off, do you see anything in tools | error console?

Comment 6

[Christoph Siefer]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #5)
> When you change the "trust externall spamfilters" setting, either on or off,
> do you see anything in tools | error console?

No, console keeps quiet.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Christoph, are you still seeing this?
Aceman had fixed some account setting issues a while ago.

Comment 8

[Christoph Siefer]

Hi Wayne,

sorry, we have disabled spam assassin due to customer emails got eaten so often by TB.

Best,

Chris

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Chris, Thanks for the update.

I think I misundertood comment 0. And I think you may have misunderstood how "trust spamassassin" works.

When you mark the spamassassin checkbox:
* Thunderbird does not use the Thunderbird addressbook whitelist (see bug 660919), and
* Thunderbird processing is not affected by marking messages in Thunderbird as junk or not junk

i.e. spamassassin's determination of whether a message is spam is final, absolute, gospel, and not overridden. In other words Thunderbird is working as designed.  If you want a message marked by spamassassin as spam, then you must put email addresses in spamassassin's whitelist.

Does that make sense?

Comment 10

[Christoph Siefer]

Doesn't make sense to me, sorry. Maybe it's working as designed, but I would consider this design as bad.
TB should trust spam-assassin but sort out all locally whitelisted users (addressbook) if configured so. 

Never mind,

Chris

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I agree, it can be inconvenient. But has your company or ISP not provided you access to customize your spamassassin settings?
You can whitelist an entire domain, like
 whitelist_from *@nscaa.com
 
(Note, "If you want a message marked by spamassassin as spam, then you must put email addresses in spamassassin's whitelist." is missing some words. It should be "If you want make sure a message is not marked by spamassassin as spam, then you must put email addresses in spamassassin's whitelist."

Comment 12

[Christoph Siefer]

Wayne,
we manage our own mailservers. Whitelisting a few thousand addresses with 10 to 20 new every day makes no sense. Who should lookup all the local address books of all our employees and update the whitelist? On an hourly (minutely) basis? Not loosing any client emails is business critical. What would be wrong with reviewing spam-assasins decisions (like the config-options suggest)? SA should be seen as a helper, not a dictator.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Really, where did you see me suggest that whitelisting all your contacts few thousand addresses would be reasonable? OTOH, if spamassassin is well tuned in it's other criteria, you should not need to do so.

That said, would you be satisfied if Thunderbird were changed to be able to use your local addressbook to whitelist spamassassin?

BTW, do many of your emails come to you in non-english language?

Comment 14

[Christoph Siefer]

Maybe I misunderstood your comment 

> You can whitelist an entire domain, like
>  whitelist_from *@nscaa.com
>  
> If you want make sure a message is not marked by spamassassin as
> spam, then you must put email addresses in spamassassin's whitelist.

I would prefer TB to rule "trust my addressbook" over "trust spam assassin" (I'm not the only one who did not know it's vice versa)

And yes, most of the incoming mails are in German.

We can end this discussion. Disabling SA helped us avoid the problem, I'm OK with it.

Best,

Chris

Comment 15

[:aceman]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk, use Needinfo for questions) from comment #13)
> That said, would you be satisfied if Thunderbird were changed to be able to
> use your local addressbook to whitelist spamassassin?

I would also support this feature as it makes sense. But I do not know how hard it would be to do (it is probably somewhere in the backend junk evaluation).

But the design in current Account manager seems correct to me. We intentionally indented the addressbook whitelist block so that is can be seen it is a suboption of the "adaptive junk mail control" (thus TB iternal junk deector) and does not apply to spamassasin (or other filter).

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

per coment 15