The

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TxRep -

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Reputation Plugin

Introduction

Tracks scores from messages previously received and adjusts the message score, either by boosting messages from senders who send ham or penalizing senders who have sent spam previously. This not only treats some senders as if they were whitelisted but also treats spammers as if they were blacklisted. Each message from a particular sender adjusts the historical total score which can change them from a spammer if they send non-spam messages. Senders who are considered non-spammers can become treated as spammers if they send messages which appear to be spam.

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How do I whitelist/blacklist someone?

Not with the this! This is a automatic heuristic system. You want to use the manual whitelist/blacklist. See ManualWhitelist.

Previous version implementation

In 3.3, the plugin is not loaded by default.

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Utility

The auto-whitelist database (when using the DB Format backend) can be examined and pruned using the program 'sa-awl'. NOTE: This was incorrectly written as sa-awlUtil in previous documentation.

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Newer version is available at http://truxoft.com/resources/sa-heatu.v4.02.tar.gz Besides other enhancements, it offers the possibility to dump, expire, or delete records by multiple criteria, including regexes. There is no online document describing all the new features, but the command line help and the integrated changelog give detailed information about them (sa-heatu -h resp. sa-heatu --changelog).

Discussion

DGerman says: " Notice that I have avoided the use of the string autowhiteList where possible. Even if "we were there first", this it is more than whitelisting."

TODO: verify example calculation, verify auto_whitelist_factor and show default

Most other products use an AutoWhitelist as automation of a manual whitelist, which is created and/or maintained by monitoring outgoing email to add entries to a whitelist without a need for human intervention. In essence, rather than adjusting a sender's average score, as in SpamAssassin, most other products literally automate the addition of names to the manual whitelist. Because autowhitelist-ing is an industry standard term for automation of a whitelist, this feature in SpamAssassin should be re-named to better align with what it actual does, such as maybe AutoReScore? In essence, be aware the term AutoWhitelist means something else on most (if not all) other anti-spam products. – JDR

SpamAssassin has been using the term "autowhitelist" for this feature since about 2001 – I think we were there first – jmason

From http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/ManualWhitelist "the name is a misnomer. The AutoWhitelist is designed as an automatic score averaging system." Maybe score averaging system? -Roger

It seems to me that this would be the place to document the default value of auto_whitelist_factor. I gather from other sources that it's 0.5. – DanielNorton

Yes, the default auto_whitelist_factor is indeed 0.5, as described in the documentation at Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AWL auto_whitelist_factor. – Adam Katz

As to how it faces users, the description can be overridden in the configuration. My (Adam Katz) production systems redescribe AWL so as to remove the confusion:

describe AWL Adjust score towards average for this sender