A Home-Grown Spam Filter

SPAM HUNTER

Article from Issue 52/2005

Author(s): OLIVER FROMMEL

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

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Print Subs

Digisubs

TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS

US / Canada

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)

News

Nextcloud Announces Raspberry Pi-Powered Home Cloud Box

Innovative system adds a hard drive and Ubuntu Core to the RPi for an IoT hub.
Linus Torvalds Confirms the Date of the First Linux Release

Linux is two weeks younger than we thought!
End of OpenOffice?

OpenOffice

The Apache Software Foundation considers retiring OpenOffice
Adobe Gives New Life to NPAPI Plugin for Linux

Adobe Flash , Flash Player

Adobe won’t kill the plugin in 2017
LinuxCon North America Convenes in Toronto, Canada

Linux Foundation's big event celebrates the 25th anniversary of Linux
Linux Turns 25

Linux has evolved from “won’t be a professional” project to one of the most professional software projects in the history of computers.
Mirantis Joins Hands with SUSE To Offer RHEL Support; Red Hat Not Happy

Competitors get in the game with RHEL without Red Hat
Linux on Windows 10 Poses a Security Risk

Security researchers have already notified Microsoft; some fixes are available
Mirantis to Refactor OpenStack Fuel for Kubernetes

The company is collaborating with Google and Intel to use Kubernetes as an engine for Fuel
Canonical Joins Document Foundation Advisory Board

The upcoming release of LibreOffice will be available as a snap package