Spam and encrypted emails

http://www.clear.net.nz/terms.html Clear have advised that spam from known spam addresses will be blocked and that other messages will be quaranteened for only 3 days after which the messages will be deleted. As I am not a systems administrator I was wondering what the usual policy for encrypted email (eg GPG) in regard to spam filtering. Is encrypting an email a guarenteed way for people to communicate and avoid messages being deleted by aggressive ISP spam policies. I assume spammers wouldn't bother encrypting email because receiver's couldn't decrypt the emails. Thoughts? Chris

On 06/10/06, Chris O'Halloran <cmoman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Clear have advised that spam from known spam addresses will be blocked and that other messages will be quaranteened for only 3 days after which the messages will be deleted.
Good that you use a gmail address then :-) Personally, clear.net's policy sucks. If some scum uses my address to spam millions of customers, I wouldn't want my legitimate e-mail blocked too.
As I am not a systems administrator I was wondering what the usual policy for encrypted email (eg GPG) in regard to spam filtering. Is encrypting an email a guarenteed way for people to communicate and avoid messages being deleted by aggressive ISP spam policies. I assume spammers wouldn't bother encrypting email because receiver's couldn't decrypt the emails.
Thoughts?
Most spam filters work by 'scoring' an e-mail for the likelihood of spam. If it goes over a certain score, then it is marked as spam. It is most likely that encrypted e-mail would not score highly, unless part of the spam filter's scoring table specifically marks encrypted e-mail (which is probably not like). Since the encrypted e-mail won't contain strings that trigger off the spam filter, it is unlikely to be marked as spam. HTH -- simon

Most spam filters work by 'scoring' an e-mail for the likelihood of spam. If it goes over a certain score, then it is marked as spam. It is most likely that encrypted e-mail would not score highly, unless part of the spam filter's scoring table specifically marks encrypted e-mail (which is probably not like). Since the encrypted e-mail won't contain strings that trigger off the spam filter, it is unlikely to be marked as spam.
Spamassassin (from memory) has a rule to massively consider encrypted mail as "not spam"
participants (3)
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Chris O'Halloran
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Perry Lorier
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Simon Green