[Hidden-tech] Digitally signed email

[Gyepi SAM]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 07:36:48PM -0400, Will Loving wrote:
> Does anyone know whether spam filters give priority to digitally signed
> emails? I just registered for and started using the Free Email security
> certificate from http://www.comodogroup.com and I wondered if it will make
> it less likely for spam filters to reject my emails.

Hi Will,

The short answer is: it depends on the filter and probably not. 

Filters work in many different ways. Some look for specific words,
others for regular expressions, and yet others use bayesian filtering and
look at all the words in the message.

Some filters may give preference to signed messages, but spammers
can sign messages too -- and have been doing so for a few years now --
so giving preference may make it easier for spam to get through.
In fact, I get a fair amount of spam with fake PGP signatures.
A bayesian filter that sees a lot of PGP signed spam will eventually
discount PGP signatures in general and may even penalize them.

Now if your messages were encrypted, the recipient's spam
filter could be configured to accept your messages, assuming they had your
public key on file. However, that would only work with recipients who know you
and run spam filters on their machines.

-Gyepi