53 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
53 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
SpamAssassin is a mail filter to identify spam.
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Using its rule base, it uses a wide range of heuristic tests on
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mail headers and body text to identify "spam", also known as
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unsolicited commercial email.
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The spam-identification tactics used include:
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header analysis:
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spammers use a number of tricks to mask their
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identities, fool you into thinking they've sent a
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valid mail, or fool you into thinking you must have
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subscribed at some stage. SpamAssassin tries to
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spot these.
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text analysis:
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again, spam mails often have a characteristic style
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(to put it politely), and some characteristic
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disclaimers and CYA text. SpamAssassin can spot
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these, too.
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blacklists:
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SpamAssassin supports many useful existing blacklists,
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such as mail-abuse.org, ordb.org or others.
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Razor:
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Vipul's Razor is a collaborative spam-tracking
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database, which works by taking a signature of spam
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messages. Since spam typically operates by sending
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an identical message to hundreds of people, Razor
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short-circuits this by allowing the first person
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to receive a spam to add it to the database -- at
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which point everyone else will automatically block
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it.
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Once identified, the mail can then be optionally tagged as spam for
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later filtering using the user's own mail user-agent application.
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SpamAssassin requires very little configuration; you do not need
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to continually update it with details of your mail accounts, mailing
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list memberships, etc. It accomplishes filtering without this
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knowledge, as much as possible.
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Read ${PREFIX}/share/doc/SpamAssassin/README
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for further installation instructions.
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Or if you are in a hurry you can read:
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${PREFIX}/share/doc/SpamAssassin/OpenBSD-SpamAssassin-mini-howto.html
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The SpamAssassin Wiki is available at <http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin>
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and contains up-to-date information on configuring SpamAssassin, and using
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some of the more advanced features of it.
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