Over the past couple of months, it seems to me that the overall effectiveness of SpamAssassin has gone down a little bit, perhaps because spammers are writing their spam specifically to dodge SpamAssassin’s rules. I realized that I was a few minor releases behind, and upgraded to version 2.44. Unfortunately, I went back and looked at the release notes and found that few, if any, of the changes will make SpamAssassin better at trapping spam. However, version 2.5 is on the way, and it’s going to implement a Bayesian filter for spam trapping, which should cause things to pick up. The persistent spam that I can’t seem to get rid of consists of ads for night clubs in Las Vegas, “stock tips” from some company (probably part of an ongoing spam and dump scheme), and very short emails promoting porn sites. A pox on all their houses, I say.