Slashdot Mirror
SpamAssassin Gets a Promotion
darthcamaro writes "The folks at internetnews.com are reporting that the Spam Assassin project has been promoted to a full top level Apache Software Foundation project..the project has been in incubation for a while and it's finally made it through...the article also reveals that Apache is now using Spam Assassin themselves: 'I think spam filtering is now a critical part of the network infrastructure and Spam Assassin is a leader in the area,' said Daniel Quinlan, chairman of the Apache Spam Assassin Project Management Committee."
A well configured installation of SA got me employee of the month way back when. Sadly, UCE/UBE is/has ruined the Internet. Finally.
"To deny our own impulses, is to deny the very thing that makes us human." - Mouse
Perhaps Slashdot editors might want to take an extra 20 seconds to check the spelling of the URLs they put in their stories.
spamassassin.org, not spamassasin.org
Brielle
This is great news! I have been running SpamAssassin on my box for quite a while, just to filter my own mail. I recently installed it on my mother's Windows 98 box to filter her mail when she checks it with Outlook Express, and she hasn't complained about Spam since. With a bit of tweaking, its been catching 95% with no false positives. Hopefully the SpamAssassin project will keep on getting better :)
For those looking for the official spam assasin site here it is
The link in the text goes to some search page
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
After using SpamAssassin for quite a while, it just wasn't cutting it - 75%-80% accuracy is still a lot of spam to go through and delete. I added DSpam to my mail server and my spam catching rate is now better than 99%.
DSpam also came with much better directions for integrating with Exim than did SpamAssassin. As fond as I was of SpamAssassin, they have some catching up to do.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
If only it truly assassinated spamers.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
See, i'm not interested in Assassinating Spam. Now if there was a SpammerAssassin, then I'd be all over using that.
What do you do with mail SA has flagged?
I like SA, and find it is very good for identifying around 95% of my incoming spam. However, I also have around 0.1% false positive rate, which means at some point I have to look through all the filtered spam messages and make sure none of them were legit.
I need a better tool for handling mail SA has identified as spam, either server-side or client-side. I'd like to delete anything with a score > 15, simply store anything with a score > 5, and send an auto-reply for scores between 5 and 10 indicating that the message was marked as spam and I'll probably never look at it.
A good set of procmail and formail rules will accomplish this, but my hosting company has a weird procmail setup and I'd prefer something easier to implement.
Any ideas?
Everyone on Slashdot always seems to be complaining about spam. I don't see what the big deal is. I enjoy receiving e-mail from people and companies I don't know. Each morning when I run my e-mail program, it starts downloading, and the unexpected e-mail is a pleasant surprise that brightens my day. Well, a few hundred pleasant surprises that is, and they brighten my day in the same way that stepping in a pile of dogshit brightens my day. A few hundred times. So what the fuck? Why are all you whiny bitches on Slashdot always complaining about spam? Don't waste your time writing or deploying spam blockers. Enjoy life. And relax. Assholes.
Shame on Google.
I don't employ Spamassassin or any other spam blocker. As a result, I now have a penis that will make her scream, hot lesbian schoolgirls lusting after my every move, a wide range of generic drugs, 2 PhDs and a completely clean credit record
A step up from living in your parent's basement and whacking off to an inflatable doll, right?
I'd stay and chat, but I have to get back to a Nigerian man about a bank transfer
I can't speak for auto-replies, but you can do the sorting part client-side. The key is that spamassassin adds a line like "X-Spam-Level: *****" where the number of *'s is the score of the email. Almost any email client can filter mail to different folders based on headers. The unary representation of the spam score ensures that even a primitive filter can work.
For example, one popular client is Microsoft Outlook, and there are several web pages in google (such as this one) that explain how to reroute mail to specific folders depending on the spamassassin score.
they'll get it when they post the story again.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
If you integrate it with your mailer, you can reject the mail during the SMTP session rather than generating a separate bounce email, which would have the problems you mentioned (going to a forged from: address). As an added bonus, when you reject it during the SMTP session, you'll get taken off a lot of spam lists, since your address will look like it had delivery problems. And you still get the advantage of bounces, that legitimate mail that got rejected will end up with a bounce back to the sender informing them of it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Spam Assassin, while a very clever program, is as misdirected as the "Canned Spam" legislation. It has no effect on the real economics of spam: who pays for it.
Somebody is paying for the spamming, and we know exactly who it is. The URL of that organization is prominently displayed in every item of spamail. It is the advertiser.
The advertiser is right there out in the open, easy to locate. If they're not, the spam isn't doing its job, and wouldn't have been sent. And easy to locate means easy to go after, easy to sue, to fine, DoS or whatever.
Dinging the advertisers, and dinging them hard, will instantly put the spammers out of business.
Spamming can be eliminated without blocking, white lists, or anti-spoofing RFC's. Just go to where it's pointing.
To draw an [ugly, graphic] picture: a dog comes and poops on sidewalk in front of my house, and I step in it. Yelling at the dog is going to be only moderately successful, building a poop filter is difficult, messy, and leaky (as Spam Assassin demonstrates) . Following the dog's leash and fining the owner is what works.
The owner doesn't bring the dog back since s/he doesn't want to pay another fine.
No owner, no dog, no spam.
Get the owner.
Kill the spam.
3.0.0pre1 was made available last week.
i ld/3.0.0_change_summary
It will apparently take another month or so to finalize the weighting of the rules.
I've put 3.0.0pre1 on a production system that filters ~350k messages per day. With some tweaking of the RBL, bayes, and AWL rules, it is much (~10%) more efficient at tagging spam than 2.63, which I'm running on a parallel server that also sees ~350k messages/day (load balancing is your friend).
More info: http://www.au.spamassassin.org/full/3.0.x/dist/bu
Publish your addy on /. (or anywhere else), wait a few days, and have fun!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
As a side note, I don't use these email addresses for personal emails - I can hopefully trust that the people I personally send emails to are not, or are not going to become spammers.
Well, that is not a very secure assumption. Unless you know that all those people are not using an MUA/OS combination that is vulnerable to viruses or worms. Harvesting addresses is done that way nowadays...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I've been running SA since February, and have had a grand total of ONE false positive out of a few thousand emails. The message was from a new account, very short, and in HTML. That address has since been added to my autowhitelist. SA couple with Amavisd-new and clamav has reduced my spam volume by about 95%, and my virus emails to zero. It's a great product and I'm looking forward to 3.0.
AccountKiller
Have a look at the Rules Emporium at:
I use the rules there, and even minor spam gets obliterated with no problems of catching real mail.
I recommend it!
-- BtB
not all bulk mail is spam. spam assassin gives 2.4 points if it finds anything that looks like a unique identifier for X-Sender, and another 1.4 points for anything that looks like a tracking image or tracked link.
that plus the points for any non-safe html colors or any html at all, SA effectively tags ANY bulk mail as spam!
For an end user to setup on their client (as a "junk mail" folder) thats great.. I like to have bulk mail seperated from my personal mail, but for an ISP to throw it away before it even gets to the intended recipient is fucking rediculous and should be illegal.
The only email an ISP should be allowed to discard are the ones with attached viruses or some known email worm. The only reason your customers are happy with you throwing away their email is because you don't fucking tell them.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Many people use spamassassin on unix boxes, or if they have Exchange they use SA on a unix gateway between the net and the Exchange system.
But if you are a smaller shop and don't have the resources for that, then you can run sa right on Exchange.
Here is a write up on how to do it (that particular write up is for Exchange 2003 and SA 3.0, but it will work for SA 2.x as well, and for Exchange 2000 - or any combination thereof - but it won't work on Exchange 5.5 that I know of).
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Challenge/Response is fundamentally broken. For more information, take a look at some discussions on the topic from debian-user: here's one. There's a few google-harvested discussions on the topic too.
You're just plain lucky. It's a fact of life that at least one of your email pals will use Windows, and store your emails in an Outlook or Outlook Express mail folder. Some days later, your pal will catch a worm or virus, and this little spam helper will harvest all those addresses, including your beloved, "protected" addy.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
We shouldn't feed the trolls (eh. ACs), but I'll bite anyway, because it's a valid argument.
You also ban all innocent bystanders than send you regular 550: no such user bounces, right? TMDA messages are exactly like bounces if you think of it. They appear automatically generated on purpose. It's a piece of cake to filter them if you dislike 'em. It's not like spam which tries to deceive you.
Now, trying not to be too caustic, backscatter is a fact of life. If you really want to avoid this completely, you have to follow a strict whitelist policy. Some people actually do this, and if you must, go ahead, block all TMDA users. It's your decision to allow/disallow users (legitimate or illegitimate), bots, or spammers to access your network. That's exactly what TMDA is all about: putting the recipient, not the sender, in control.
OTOH, it's up to TMDA's users to decide how they control their own networks. If it helps stem the spam tide (and it does extremely well!), it will be used. Sending innocent bystanders a 550: No such user or a TMDA confirmation message with a list of full headers is qualitatively the same; perhaps even better, because if you belong to some spam busters brigade, you're free to use those headers to RBL the initial offender, dynamic IP zombie or whatever.
Instead of whining about backscatter, fix SMTP or your legislation (or both). In the mean time, C/R systems are the only alternative to content-based filtering. If you combine C/R and C/B systems, you also reduce the amount of TMDA bounces. Permbanning only helps the spammers by intimidating potential TMDA users and slowing down a more widespread adoption of C/R systems (which would also dry up the spam stream substantially). But, as said, you're the recipient, and you're free to do whatever you like. It's your resources. Make good use of them.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.