Do the messages actually reference SpamAssassin? That is an open source program with no connection to Norton. Norton's Anti-spam also does not look at outgoing messages, so if these are being flagged as spam it is not Norton that is doing it. As far as I know when Norton Anti-spam is turned off, it is fully disabled. It could be your ISP or someone else who has set up SpamAssassin as an email filter. See this SpamAssassin web page for some possible explanations for what you are seeing:
SendOfJive posted while I was composing a reply, but allow me to provide some additional information.
If you will check this link by Symantec employee Kavitha, you will find that the NIS 2010 Anti-Spam engine is now using Brightmail technology.
When NIS 2010 identifies incoming mail as spam it is tagged with [Norton Antispam] in the subject line; no other messages.
I agree with SendOfJive; if you are experiencing blocked outgoing mail and references to SpamAssassin, it may be on the part of your ISP. You might want to check with them.
I uninstalled NIS2010 and switched to another security suite because of that (and din't get any error since then)
I was asking this question in this post because I will move to a new clean machine under Win7 and wanted to make sure to have no trace at all about anti-spam engines and try again NIS2010
Maybe I should check whether everything is still available in the closed tickets I opened with Symantec support. At least I had the exact title and strings described.But I don't see such a section on Symantec web page.
Ok this time, my laptop is brand new, it has only Win7, NIS2010 with all SPAM turned OFF, MS Office 2007, PhotoShop Elements and a C++ development tool.
Got that Spam Assassin message and this time I have a proof (screen capture )
This is regarding a totally legit message from my health insurance...
As you can see, it's Norton Internet Security telling me that SpamAssassin has blocked the message.
1- Obviously, SpamAssassin is part of NIS2010 engine, not only brightmail. This latter is actually based on SpamAssassin, just check the web for this information.
2- Obviously, NIS2010 with all SPAM options turned off (for ever, not for only 15 minutes) still filters messages!
Also, just to be sure, I never ever installed SpamAssassin or any other anti spam solution on my laptop since I have spam filtering on the server side offered by my ISP.
Thank you for posting the screenshot of your email alert. Your interpretation of the information, however, is not correct (not your fault - the alert is unfortunately vague about what it is actually reporting, and it would help us all if such alerts could be a little more precise and enlightening). This is not Norton telling you about anything that Norton did. It is Norton passing along a 554 error from your email service provider informing you that the email in question was rejected by that provider based upon a SpamAssassin detection. Norton is merely the messenger here relaying the news from your ISP about why the email failed to be delivered. Your screenshot confirms the earlier advice given here that your email service is in fact using SpamAssassin to filter all messages and you need to contact them about the blocked emails you are seeing.
There are technical reasons involving the way Norton email scanning operates that cause notices from your ISP to be displayed by Norton rather than in your email client. The following is excerpted from this Symantec Support article concerning a similar error code:
Q
But the message says that it is from Norton AntiVirus. Doesn't this message mean that there is a problem with the program?
A
No, it does not. Norton AntiVirus includes Email Scanning. Email Scanning is an extra layer of protection that scans incoming and outgoing email. To do this job, Email Scanning is placed between your email program and the ISP. If the ISP rejects an outgoing email immediately, Norton AntiVirus carries the message. But the message is really from the ISP.
I hope this clears things up about your alerts.
Message Edited by SendOfJive on 12-10-2009 12:27 AM
Message Edited by SendOfJive on 12-10-2009 12:35 AM
If you consider your problem as solved, would you please mark the post which gave you the correct solution by clicking on the green button on the post. This way everyone will know the problem is solved and others will be able to find the solution quickly. Thank you.