I am trying my best to explain to a non-technical person how spamassassin works. The other issue I have is that I am trying to explain to them why they need to drag mail to a public folder so the server can learn it as spam. They say they are doing it but they get the message several times a day.. Again.. I need to explain in laymans terms why they might get the same message again a few more times until the server learns it.
My best layman explanations are below, please critique them, as I am having trouble making a layman understand. Here is my explanation for how spamassassin works(laymans terms): 1. Email comes into the mail server from the internet 2. Once the server has received the email, it then scans the email and compares it to a list of rules. Every time a rule is matched, the server adds points to the email. 3. When the server completes the scan of the email, it takes the total number of points assigned to that email and compares that point value with the maximum allowed points. If the point value is over the maximum the server marks the message as spam. 4. if the server marks the email as spam, the email is forwarded to the quarantine mailbox, if its marked as spam, the email is forwarded to the intended recipient. Here is my explanation for how spamassassin learns email as spam(laymans terms): 1. Users receive the junk email 2. The users who received the junk email drags and drops the email to the spammail public folder in outlook 3. Spamassassin connects to the internal email server and downloads the email from the spammail public folder. 4. After the email is downloaded, the mail is scanned, the different aspects of the email are noted and point rules inside the spamassassin engine are updated(raised) based on the number of instances a rule is found in emails from the spammail public folder. Any help would be appreciated(thanks). -Brent
