I am starting to see a large number of messages in tblQuarantine that have a RejectID of zero (0) and Reject Details of "neutral" (just the single word "neutral" nothing else).  This appears to be happening on all messages where the SPF evaluation returns "neutral" as in the following.  (The IPs are correct, the email addresses have been changed.)

07/26/04 00:03:05:617 -- (70) Connection from: 66.135.197.27  -  Originating country : United States
07/26/04 00:03:06:168 -- (70) Resolving 66.135.197.27 - mxpool21.ebay.com
07/26/04 00:03:06:339 -- (70) - SPF record found. analyzing: - v=spf1 ip4:207.217.120.0/23 ip4:207.69.200.0/24 ip4:209.86.89.0/24 ?all
07/26/04 00:03:06:339 -- (70) - SPF analysis done: - neutral
07/26/04 00:03:06:339 -- (70) 66.135.197.27 - Mail from: namewithheld@earthlink.net To: namewithheld@mydomain.com will be quarantined
07/26/04 00:03:07:470 -- (70) EMail from namewithheld@earthlink.net to namewithheld@mydomain.com was received and quarantined. Size: 13 KB, 13312 bytes
07/26/04 00:03:07:470 -- (70) Disconnect

The above message shows up in tblQuarantine with a RejectId of zero (0) and RejectDetails of "neutral".  I can see what happened here -- the message was posted on an eBay form and handled by an eBay mail server, outside of Earthlink's explicitly declared address space -- but that's an SPF issue, not a SpamFilter issue.  The handling of these "neutral" messages by SpamFilter is what I'm asking about here.  Should these "neutral" messages be handled by SpamFilter as a "pass" or at least a "softfail"?

We're running version 2.1.1.369, database is Microsoft SQL Server 7.0.

Thanks for your help -- Jim

My sentence about "Should these "neutral" messages be handled by SpamFilter as a "pass" or at least a "softfail"?" was a bit confusing.  Let me clarify.

In my GUI, neutral messages are still at the default setting (Pass).  Yet, it seems that neutral messages are NOT passing... they are being quarantined.  (I have not researched to see if this is happening to ALL neutrals or just SOME of them, but it is happening with regular frequency.) 

The way that I discovered the problem was through the database detail itself -- I found a lot of records in tblQuarantine with a RejectID of zero (0) for these "neutral" messages.  It may be an error that is only occurring when neutrals are set to Pass (in the GUI).  Since you are blocking neutrals, this is probably the reason you are not experiencing this same issue.

Thanks -- Jim

Jim,

I looked in my quarantine for anythin blocked with "neutral" and all seemed to have a reject ID of 15 AFTER July 22.  This is when I updated to build 369.

18510768 hngcyovaug@bellsouth.net some-user@domain.net Low cost meds shipped overnight 2004-07-26 01:01:28.000 14156190 15 550 The sender did not meet Sender Policy Framework rules. Please see http://spf.pobox.com 0 0 5

Is this a build issue?  Before 369 the option to set the neutral to fail was not available so you may be correct that by my setting that option, the effect is not present.

Dan S.

Dan,

Yes, the error apparently came in between builds 367 and 369, most likely when the "neutral" handling was added.

No, I haven't contacted Roberto outside of the messages posted in this forum.  I figured that these support forum posts would be sufficient... if you'd like to contact him off-forum, that's fine.

Thanks again for your efforts.

Jim

Jim,