Okay.. stop with the darn ***SPAM*** editing on my EMAILS!!!

[Jasoco]

I know it's MacOSX.com. All of a sudden in the last few days, Mail flakes out and can't get my MacOSX.com email. It NEVER did that before. Now all of a sudden I'm getting all my new incomming Topic Reply Notification emails with some stupid "THIS EMAIL IS SPAM!!!!" message tacked onto it. I AM REALLY ANGRY ABOUT THIS.

I do NOT need this "option". I want it off. 3 days ago MacOSX.com email was 10 times better than the Comcast.net email I was trying to get away from. Not it's 10 times WORSE.

What did you guys DO to it?

I'm paying $8 a year for this, don't make me ask for a refund. I don't need this kind of stress.

Here's a sample of what I get. The Notification is NOT SPAM and SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS TEXT IN IT!

From: notification@macaddict.com
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 6:29:01 PM US/Eastern
To:
Subject: *****SPAM***** Topic Reply Notification - heres IRONY for you

---- Start SpamAssassin results
5.20 points, 5 required;
* 0.8 -- From: does not include a real name
* 2.6 -- To: is empty
* 0.7 -- BODY: Gives a lame excuse about why you were sent this spam
* 0.5 -- Missing To: header
* 0.6 -- Message looks like Outlook, but isn't

---- End of SpamAssassin results



From: notification@macaddict.com
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 6:29:01 PM US/Eastern
To:
Subject: Topic Reply Notification - heres IRONY for you
Reply-To: notification@macaddict.com



Hello,

You are receiving this email because

***Standard Notification body text***

--
Thanks, The Management

What is with that header part? Why is it there? What the hell is SpamAssassin? Why didn't I get an Opt-Out for it? Why no email about it? Is it yours? It has to be! It can't be anyone else! I am super pissed right now.

Apologies in advance.

[Giaguara]

There is no receiver in to: field?

Are you using spam assassin? If so, how did you install it, and with what? Mail of 10.2 itself can't have it - if you managed to set it up somewhere let me know.

Are these mails coming always from that same address? Are they coming to the account you have in macosx.com? If the first is yes, could you just block the domain macaddict.com?

[edX]

i certainly haven't been getting any spam alerts on any of my macosx.com emails. and believe me, the general contact addy gets real spam daily.

and just for the record - i don't read chinese, arabic or any non-english language for that matter. trying to ask for site help in anything but english goes straight in the trash as spam.

[Jasoco]

Originally posted by Giaguara
There is no receiver in to: field?

Are you using spam assassin? If so, how did you install it, and with what? Mail of 10.2 itself can't have it - if you managed to set it up somewhere let me know.

Are these mails coming always from that same address? Are they coming to the account you have in macosx.com? If the first is yes, could you just block the domain macaddict.com?

I have no idea what Spam Assassin IS! It just started doing this at 6PM today! All of a sudden!

Certain emails have no "To:" field and they show up like this. I can't track it down and I really want to get it to stop. If it's not MacOSX.com (Which is the account I use.) who could it be?

Why would I BLOCK MacAddict.com? I WANT THE EMAILS! I WANT THE REPLY NOTIFICATIONS! But it screws my whole damn routine up because it adds extra text to the Subject and the body making me REALLY PISSED.

Certain Notification emails have them. Specifically from MacAddict and Vintage Gamer. But not from MacOSX.com.

But I still can't track down WHO exactly has Spam software installed. It has to be somewhere in the middle. Because I have no Spam softrware installed. I even checked Top and Process Viewer for any weird looking process names. Anyone know what it would be named if I did have it? And how it would install itself? I doubt it is on here. It has to be somewhere in the middle.

The ones from Vintage Gamer come in as even MORE Spam:

From: mark@vintagegamer.net
Date: Fri Sep 12, 2003 4:09:05 AM US/Eastern
To:
Subject: *****SPAM***** Topic Reply Notification - A Fresh Haul of Nes Goodness!

---- Start SpamAssassin results
106.40 points, 5 required;
* 0.8 -- From: does not include a real name
* 2.6 -- To: is empty
* 0.7 -- BODY: Gives a lame excuse about why you were sent this spam
* 100.0 -- From: address is in the user's black-list
* 0.7 -- 'Message-Id' was added by a relay (3)
* 0.5 -- Missing To: header
* 0.5 -- Message has X-MSMail-Priority, but no X-MimeOLE
* 0.6 -- Message looks like Outlook, but isn't

---- End of SpamAssassin results

Once again, no "To:" Field. If there's NO TO, how does it FIND me? What is going on here?

Edit: A GOogle search turned up the following:

Why Are You Spamming Me?

If you are seeing SpamAssassin data in the mail message, then this indicates that somebody at your ISP, your web hosting company, your employers, etc. has set up a mail filter which detects spam and adds these markings so that you can filter it more easily, should you wish to.

It would seem that Comcast has installed this thing. I checked their site and the preferences to turn it off AREN'T EVEN SET UP YET!!! I gotta write a nasty email to them. Tell them to MIND THEIR OWN DAMN BUSINESS!

Sorry I blamed MacOSX.com. It seemed most logical at the time. But now I got bigger fish to fry.

[Giaguara]

Check spam assassin site. www.spamassassin.org

It is a spam filter for unix email clients. (see more on their site). Mail of OS X up to 10.1 can use Unix mailboxes. I assume you have 10.2, thus you can't have it set up .. someone could have signed your email to the service? I would contact spamassassin about the emails, forwarding some to them as example.

Spam assassin is a really good filter, I know people using it, e.g. with Mutt (mail client), and I do know also friends who would like to be able to use it with 10.2 mail, or Entourage.

Do you get emails from more than 1 address? Are all those having spam assassin, or just one?

Have you asked your ISP if they know something?

[Jasoco]

I already checked their site. They said that the ISP should have contacted the people when they set it up. I didn't get ANY emails about it. They also said I could ask my ISP to add me to the Whitelist. Which is what I did. So hopefully I'll be out of this mess soon.

This Is The First I've Heard About It!

You should have been informed that this was going to happen. We plaster this message all over our installation manuals, website, etc. However, we still receive reports from people whose first contact with SpamAssassin is when it suddenly appears in their mail -- which indicates that whoever installed it on their mail systems never bothered to tell them about it. Unsurprisingly, we think this is a little unprofessional.

Typically the person to contact is your ISP's tech support department, your web hosting company's tech support department, or your systems administrator.

Seems Comcast was NAUGHTY and didn't let its users KNOW they were doing this. That's a No No.

They also mention that the ISP may not know about it. In which case I have to contact Comcast's web host. I really hope I'm not chasing this damn thing all over the internet. It's more trouble than good.

I get almost NO Spam as it is. And the emails I DO want are being marked as SPAM. What a sucky filter!

[Giaguara]

Call Comcast, and tell us their response. Spamassassin, when set up and trained properly works pretty well (when user chooses to want to use it etc), but it's different being forced to use it.

[Jasoco]

If I don't get an Email response by tomorrow night, I'll call them.