How Lotus Domino 8 should handle spam, just a suggestion.

Lotus Domino 8 is in the horizon, soon it will come. I do hope that IBM give more attention about how Lotus Domino 8 handle spam.

This is what my suggestion about how Lotus Domino 8 should handle spam and this is my personal opinion only.

Right now Lotus Domino have two tasks to receives and delivers emails to the users, SMTP task and Router task. I think that IBM can add another task for spam filter, just between the SMTP task and the router task.

Current flow:
SMTP task --> Router task

Suggestion flow:
SMTP task --> Spam Filter task --> Router task

This is the flow.

SMTP Task

This task function just like sendmail, but in domino it only for receive emails that sent through SMTP protocols. For sending emails to SMTP protocols domino use the router task. Since domino 7, domino already have significant tools to handle spam like DNSBL, whitelist and blacklist. Even there is no milter, greylist, or GreetPause, but I think SMTP task is enough.
In SMTP task we can reject or tagged emails that listed in DNSBL. If we choose to tagged emails, then when emails delivered to spam filter task, spam filter will give it a score and the score should be high enough.

Spam Filter task (New)
This is where the spam filter really works. It should have many modules to filter spam. Anti virus software can create their modules and then add the module in this task. We also can create our own custom module and then add it to this task.

Spamassassin (like) module
This new task should be using the scoring system like Spamassassin. Spamassassin is doing well in scoring emails. Spamassassin having many rules and each rules will add a score to the total score, then the total score will be use to detemined if the email is spam or ham (not spam). We can set the minimum score for low spam, and the minimum score for high spam. At the end, this task will added new headers to the mail header for final processing in server rules and mail rules.

This sample how Spamassassin scoring works.

The total score is 7.86.
If we set the minimum score for spam is 4, than this email will be tagged as spam.

I do know that there is a project in openntf to integrate Spamassassin in domino

http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/SpamAssassin%20Integration
, so I know this is possible.

Bayes module
Well IBM already promising bayes in domino 8, so I don't think this is a problem. Another suggestion that domino should provide mail in database for spam and ham, so users can sent emails to designation database. Then the bayes will learn form that databases.

DCC, Razor and Pyzor modules
These three tools perform very well in Spamassassin, so I think domino
should also use this tools.

Another DNSBL?
Just to add more score?

Router task
Server rules will than process the header from spam filter task, and do
some action for the emails marked as spam (or ham). I think the best rules
is for high scoring spam should be deleted, and for low scoring spam should
be delivered to the junk folder.

Well, I think I try to recreate MailScanner for domino. But MailScanner is
a very good software, so there is no reason why IBM not using the same
technique like MailScanner in Lotus Domino 8.