Spam (solved)

From: JDP (jacques@dtext.com)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 09:22:39 MDT

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    I was quite happy to solve (at least temporarily) my individual spam
    problem, and I wanted to share it in case it is useful to anyone (the
    solution works for Unix/Linux and Windows 95 and up).

    I use Linux as my main OS, and my first try was with Vipul Razor
    <http://razor.sourceforge.net/>. Nice, but it only caught a modest
    fraction of the spam. I then switched to a Perl solution that goes by
    the silly name of SpamAssassin (now on SA) <http://www.spamassassin.org/>,
    wich turned out to be awesome.

    SA uses both text analysis based on a large number of rules, and
    online checks (including Vipul Razor if you like). Online checks can
    be disabled, which is much faster and almost as useful. In many months
    of use, I only had one mailing list producing false positives (French
    folks sending HTML-only messages with typically spam-like formatting).

    Then, very recently, I had a few SERIOUS false positives. I was quite
    worried, but then discovered the reason: a black list had stopped
    working (as mentionned by someone else here) AND RETURNED POSITIVE TO
    EVERY CHECK. To avoid this, just get a recent version of SA, or see <http://news.spamassassin.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=44&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

    SA is a collection of Perl modules distributed under Perl's Artistic
    license, so it can easily be ported to other platforms. I was asked an
    anti-spam solution by a friend using Windows, and I found a nice
    Windows port of SA (implemented as a local POP3 proxy server). It is
    very easy to install and as effective as the original. It works with
    any email client.

    <http://saproxy.bloomba.com/docs/faq.html> (read first entry for download)

    Of course, you will still download the spam -- unless you have access
    to procmail (Unix) at your web service provider. I don't; I have a
    fetchmail + local procmail setup. The relevant part of my .procmailrc is

    # spamassassin
    :0fw
    | /usr/bin/spamassassin
    :0:
    * ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
    spam-assassin.spool

    Windows users don't need to do anything like that. (They just need to
    ask at install time that the proxy POP server be started at boot time.)

    Jacques

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