SPAM Control

[mdwatts]

I was watching a episode of Daily Planet (Toronto/Canadian show) on Discovery Channel last night of which they had a ten minute segment on spammers and spam control.

I had a look at their website this morning and though I didn't read that much on their website yet, I will likely look into implementing SBL/XBL shortly if it's possible to use with Kmail.

http://www.spamhaus.org/

If anyone successfully implements SBL/XBL, please post your results. Thanks

[Hayl]

afaik, it is a mail-server-only thing.

for example in Postfix you add the following to /etc/postfix/main.cnf
# Add Spamhaus XBL-RBL
maps_rbl_domains = sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
smtpd_client_restrictions = reject_maps_rbl

PS: your URL is wrong, it should be www.spamhaus.org

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Hayl
afaik, it is a mail-server-only thing.

PS: your URL is wrong, it should be www.spamhaus.org

That is what I figured as Kmail does not have the requirements as stated on the spamhaus site.

:rolleyes: Darn keyboard !! :rolleyes:

Thanks Dale... I'll fix the url.

<edit>

Actually you (being a moderator) could have edited my post yourself and fixed the url instead of pointing out MY error for everyone to see. :mad:

:D

[Hayl]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Actually you (being a moderator) could have edited my post yourself and fixed the url instead of pointing out MY error for everyone to see. :mad:

:D

ya but it's more fun to bug you :) and then you can bug me about the weather here in Calgary, was 21-24 C a few days ago and the past 2 days has been snow :) typical for here this time of year but not any less annoying...

PS: Read any good posts written in binary yet today :P

[mdwatts]

It's 15C today with the next couple of days to be 19-20C. We've not had snow (in the city of Toronto) for at least 6 weeks. Not a bad winter at all really.

Binary as in EWG?

[Hayl]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Binary as in EWG?

heh, he has his own acronym now :)

[goon12]

I use "body_checks" in postfix to filter for spam and attachments. Works great :)

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by goon12
I use "body_checks" in postfix to filter for spam and attachments. Works great :)

Thanks... Is there a website for 'body_checks'?

[Hayl]

Mike, are you grabbing your mail with fetchmail? if you are then I recommend using PopFile. It's a pop proxy that sits between fetchmail and your isp (written in perl) and based on Bayesian filtering... so, it learns based on you telling it when it is wrong about classifying mail.

[bwkaz]

NOOOO!!!!

Not blacklists!! Anything but blacklists!

http://www.paulgraham.com/falsepositives.html

I am listed on a bunch of blacklists, simply because my mail server is on a dynamic IP. It has nothing to do with any spam that came from my IP, it's just the fact that it's dynamic. And there isn't sqat that I can do about it, other than fork out a bunch of money for a static IP.

For example, I can't send a single mail to the linuxabi@zytor.com list (even though I'm subscribed to it), because that server uses some blacklist or another, and my ISP's dynamic-IP block is tagged as dynamic in that blacklist. So nothing from me is accepted by the zytor.com server. Which absolutely sucks.

Blacklists might be OK if everybody's mail came from a static IP, but I'm sorry, that's never going to be the case.

Bayesian filtering (either at the server level or at the client level with a mail client like Thunderbird) is always going to be better, because it uses headers (including the source IP address) and content together, rather than only one piece of information.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Hayl
Mike, are you grabbing your mail with fetchmail?

I'm just using Kmail and it's filters. I had loads and loads of spam filters, but deleted them all and just created new ones for 'justlinux.com', my work domain and domains/email addresses from relatives and friends. All the others go directly to trash.

Even though it's just a couple of clicks to empty the Kmail trash, I would rather not have the spam downloaded at all, but removed before arriving in my Kmail mail boxes.

Thanks Dale and Bryan as I'll look into Bayesian filtering. Any suggestions for Kmail alone or Kmail & Procmail (since it's already installed)?

<edit>

BTW... I'm getting around 40 spams a day for my main home email account while the other three home email accounts do not receive any spam at all.

[Hayl]

you can proxy kmail through popfile to filter yopop3 mail.

popfile.sf.net

(and it has a cool octopus logo as well :))

[mdwatts]

Thanks Dale. I already found Popfile and downloaded both the Windows and other os packages. Now to figure out how to setup with Kmail and my isp. :)

Gotta first finish working on the gf's pc as I replaced W2K with XP Pro, have most of the apps installed, but now need to setup the Linksys Wireless G card along with the Wireless G router I've added to my network that already consists of a Linksys (wired) router and Dlink switch.

[M8ram]

Personally I use SpamAssassin http://www.spamassassin.org which catches pretty much all +100 spam messages I receive every day. (disadvantages of being on some mailing lists)

I do have to download all those messages however...

Using evolution it was really easy to set up, don't know about Kmail but if it has a possiblity to pipe messages to external commands and filter based on the return code it should be just as easy!

HTH

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Hayl
Mike, are you grabbing your mail with fetchmail? if you are then I recommend using PopFile.

An update on Popfile.

Thanks again for the suggestion Dale.

Kmail alone is working great with Popfile and the Classifications, Buckets and Kmail filters. I'm impressed with the 97.41% accuracy so far and that is only after a few days of training.

[Hayl]

good, i'm glad it is working.

i recommended it to another person as well and he likes it too.