A Home-Grown Spam Filter

SPAM HUNTER

Article from Issue 52/2005
Author(s):

Even if you do not have a mail server of your own, SpamAssassin can help you filter out unsolicited junk mail. This article describes how SpamAssassin collaborates with Evolution and KMail. Thunderbird, on the other hand, has its own simple spam-detection feature.

Spammers invent more perfidious tricks every day to confuse spam detection software. For example, they modify the text and subject line to leave just a minimum of legible information. They also add punctuation between the individual letters within a word to prevent simple tests for text strings: for example, V.a.l.i.u.m is not the same as Valium. SpamAssassin gives you the weapons you need to fight spam. SpamAssassin checks for gappy brand names and detects a whole range of suspicious products. Spammers who use tricks to slip brand names into your inbox are actually shooting themselves in the foot, because brand names of the types typically used by spammers are unlikely to occur in normal email messages.

Buy this article as PDF

Express-Checkout as PDF
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)

Buy Linux Magazine

SINGLE ISSUES
Print Issues
Digital Issues
 
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Print Subs
Digisubs
 
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
Get it on Google Play

US / Canada

Get it on Google Play

UK / Australia

Related content

  • IMAP spam filter

    We’ll show you a custom solution for moving spam to a separate folder and adding new spam signatures to SpamAssassin.

    more »
  • Secure Email Intro

    Don’t look now, but your mailbox is full of junk, and a snooper is live on a distant server, reading your opinions of your boss. Remember when email used to be easy? To restore some sanity to your correspondence, you’ll need the right tools.

    more »
  • Charly's Column

    SA-Update helps beleaguered admins face the onslaught of consumer trash.

    more »
  • 2010 Mails Trigger SpamAssassin

    The Apache Project has warned of a bug in versions 3.2.0 to 3.2.5 of SpamAssassin that triggers an excessive number of spam alerts by mails from 2010. Debian Lenny is also infected.

    more »
  • SpamAssassin 3.3.0 Splits Off Rules

    With version 3.3.0, the free spam filter SpamAssassin has its first big release since May, 2007.

    more »
comments powered by Disqus

Visit Our Shop

Trial Subscription

Digital Subscription

Subscribe

Direct Download

Read full article as PDF:

SpamAssassin_Spam_Filters.pdf (433.93 kB)

DevOps

News

Tag Cloud

Administration Community Events Hardware Linux Linux New Media Linux Pro Magazine Mobile Programming Software Ubuntu Web Development Windows free software open source