When are emails marked as spam?

[gretchendv]

At what point in the mail delivery cycle are emails marked as spam? Is it when an email arrives at the server and before it is distributed to the appropriate inbox? or after it has been delivered to the inbox. I'd expect email to be marked as spam before they arrive at an individual user's account, and then I'd expect the email to be routed where the user has specified. For some reason my bayesian filter appears to be completely ineffective. I'm starting to wonder if the email is being downloaded and removed from the server before it has a chance to process the email as spam. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Gretchen

[rob]

An email is marked as SPAM at the moment it arrives in the mail server. Basically the SMTP service processes and applies all the SPAM filter rules. The mail then passes through content filtering, AV scanning then is delivered to local users... And then if required, passed into the outgoing mail queue for delivery. However, I should note that if you refering to user filtering options, that custom filters take presidence over all other filters. This is because custom filters are intended to double as a potential white list (something that we intend to add in a future update).