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What headers are added to email by SpamAssassin?

A number of headers can be added to incoming email messages to flag the possible spam content. These headers are invisible and do not affect the appearance or content of your email message. You can however see these yourself by looking for the "show all headers" or similar option from within your email client.

These headers are added to enable you to set-up filters in your email client to send possible spam to specific folders instead of having it sit in your inbox amongst valid email. You can even configure a filter to send possible spam directly to a deleted items folder although this should only be done when you are comfortable that genuine email is not being sent there accidentally.

SpamAssassin will not consider email that scores less than 5.0 within it's definitions as spam so it may contain a header similar to that below.

X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-4.3 tagged_above=-999.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, HTML_60_70, HTML_MESSAGE

This example scores -4.3 so is highly unlikely to be spam.

Had this example scored higher, additional headers may have been included like those below. This one which is trying to sell weight loss medication scores 6.1 as well as failing some of the other tests so is most likely to be spam.

X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=6.1 tagged_above=-999.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_50, FORGED_OUTLOOK_TAGS, HTML_60_70, HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_02, HTML_MESSAGE, HTML_TAG_BALANCE_BODY, LOSE_POUNDS

X-Spam-Level: ******

X-Spam-Flag: YES

Note: if you have the appropriate filtering level set for your address, the subject line may also be modified to prefix [SPAM] to the existing subject line content. This is the easiest way to set-up filters for your email. If you want a more finely tuned method for filtering you can use the additional options from the above headers. This will require some technical knowledge but you may be assisted by information from the following website's:

http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/frame/resources/how_to/email/spam.html

http://pop.perigee.net/spamfilter.php?flag=X-Spam-Flag&flagvalue=Yes&comment=Filtering%20Spam%20using%20X-Spam-Flag