[CLUE-Tech] The SPAM Wars '03

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 02-28 11:36, Mike Staver wrote:
> > Sure it's possible.  You should learn something about procmail rules.
> >  Basically you could write a fairly simple perl script (or language of
> > your choice) to pipe messages from procmail and reject based on
> > conditions you define, such as keywords or senders, etc.
> 
> Ok, that sounds good - but I don't know what procmail is.  Is it
> something that runs server side along with sendmail?  Sorry I sound like
> such a newbie, but I have very limited experience with any type of mail
> server. 
> 
> > What I've found to be very helpful for me is SpamAssassin.  I have had 0
> > false-positives in the 6 months or so that we've been running it here.
> >  And it catches about 1500 spams per month.  This would be the easier
> > way for you to go but not quite as flexible as writing your own code.
> > My mailbox went from 30+ spams per day to 1 per week.  It works.. :)
> 
> Ok, I've heard of SpamAssassin, but isn't that a client side thing that
> you can attach to your mail client? If so, I can't use that because I
> check my mail various ways throughout the day:
> 
> Pine
> Netscape Messenger
> Webmail
> 
> And not to mention, it would only work for me and not the rest of my
> account holders for my server.  

No, SpamAssassin is not just attached to a mail client. It can be
implemented system-wide. I googled up this link, which deals with installing
SpamAssassin + sendmail on OpenBSD:

http://davespicks.com/writing/programming/spamassassinopenbsd.html



BTW: I see SpamAssassin has released 2.5, which include Bayesian filtering:

http://news.spamassassin.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=18&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at americanisp.net  
http://users.americanisp.net/~seanleblanc/
Get MLAC at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlac/
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-Clarence Darrow