Porn still gets through, legit stuff doesn't.

[Ann]

Today I just realized I missed out on a Pug Party (local pug owners getting together with their dogs) because I never received the flyer they sent me via email. They sent both my husband and me the email flyers (which I assume was some sort of attachment that got filtered out) at our different addresses, both hosted here under my account.

Unfortunately, I still get anonymous people's nether regions showing up in my inbox.

What exactly do the email filters filter out? Sometimes my husband and I will try and email eachother pictures through the email, and we never receive them. This is legit stuff...pictures of cactuses and stuff.

Why is it that the spam filters filter out our stuff, and other legit stuff (who knows what else I'm not receiving), but the naughty junk still gets through?

[Afkamm]

Are you using spam-assassin, if so what setting do you have it on? Do you use an email client like Outlook Express or Eudora, if so do you have filtering turned on?

[Ann]

Are you using spam-assassin,

Yes.

if so what setting do you have it on?

Spam Assassin is currently: enabled
Spam Box is currently: disabled
I have not enabled any other script or anything.

Do you use an email client like Outlook Express or Eudora, if so do you have filtering turned on?

I use Mail under Panther (Mac OSX 10.3.6). I do have filtering with that. If you're not familiar with the filtering system it uses, you "teach" it by labelling unwanted email as junk.

I also have email filtering with my account emails, which filters out mostly just items that have caused my email to hang:

$header_subject: contains "kill the writer of this document!"
$header_subject: contains "read it immediately"
$header_subject: contains "something for you"
$message_body contains ".pif"
$message_body contains "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
$message_body contains "a potentially executable attachment"
$message_body contains "application/x-zip-compressed"
$message_body contains "mails.zip"
$message_body contains "your_file.pif"

The funny thing is, I found out about the missed pug event because I got a huge email afterwards, with pictures of all the pugs and their owners (jpeg files, which are usually filtered out through some server-wide filters that AOH must be using because as a graphic artist, I certainly want to receive jpegs from clients). THAT wasn't filtered out, but the original email telling of the event, was.

[Afkamm]

AOH don't filter out emails on a server wide scale unless they're a recent and dangerous virus. :)

I personally don't have any trouble receiving emails with embedded or attached files.

Have your tried turning off the filtering under Panther and sending pictures to each other? Next step is turning off spam assassin and seeing if they get through then. :)

[Ann]

I know it's not Mac's Mail client that is filtering out because when I use my email with my isp (not my emails with my domain accounts), the jpegs get through. That's what I've had to resort to.

I am reluctant to turn off spamassassin due to problems I had with certain humungus spammy email attachments causing my email account to freeze up hence causing a lot of time spent trying to log onto email online to delete the dang file. But I can give it a try for a while to see what happens.

[Afkamm]

If you can send files to each other when spam assassin is turned off, but can't when it's on, then you'll know that it's to blame so contact one of the admins directly using "live chat" and ask if they can take a look at it. :)

[Star Child]

I know it's not Mac's Mail client that is filtering out because when I use my email with my isp (not my emails with my domain accounts), the jpegs get through. That's what I've had to resort to.

I am reluctant to turn off spamassassin due to problems I had with certain humungus spammy email attachments causing my email account to freeze up hence causing a lot of time spent trying to log onto email online to delete the dang file. But I can give it a try for a while to see what happens.

You can also use IMAP instead of POP, which allows you to delete emails with suspicious attachment directly on the server before you download them.