Hi Kengele,

The threshold value determines the maximum message spamscore which spamassassin can allow. The higher the spam score rate is, the higher is the chance that once the mail has been sent, it will be filtered out as spam. So the lower the threshold value the more conservative the system is, in other words it will filter more messages.

For example we have 15 messages in a mailbox, according to the different threshold values the system will work in different ways:

Threshold: 2
Messages filtered (marked as spam): 8

Threshold: 4
Messages filtered (marked as spam): 5

Threshold: 10
Messages filtered (marked as spam): 1


Quote Originally Posted by kengele View Post
I am confused by the wording here and in the Spam Assassin section of the Control Panel -

In Spam Assassin it says "(Note: 5 is the default setting. The higher the number, the more conservative the setting.)" - "conservative" could mean either not strong or strong in this case - it is ambiguous! - Which is it?

In this article you write - "False positives can occur if your spam threshold is set too low." I assume this means if my Spam threshold is low - say "3" - I am more likely to get more mail being marked as spam. Is that correct?

I am asking because it would make more sense to me that the higher the number the stronger the setting, and therefore if I chose say "7" I would get more mail marked as spam, but from what you have written it seems that is not the case, correct?

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but to me it is unclear.