Hi, [Note: please set your mailer to wrap lines] On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 10:01:24 -0500 "gentian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am a baby to spamassassin and before I start getting my hands dirty on > it I am still collecting information about it. > No Spam Today for windows (which implements spamassassin engine) has an > option that rejects the emails tagged as spam, so it tells the sender > that the email was never received and you may add a subject that tells > the sender to send another email to your a administrator address > somewhere else where it can be received and if it is a false positive > the sender will reply back so you can add his address manually to white > list. > > Is such a thing possible with SpamAssassin and some other combinations > in Redhat ?? It is not directly possible to do with SpamAssassin but you can do it with SA and other tools (procmail, etc.) However, unless you want to contribute to the overall level of UBE, mail abuse, and other junk traffic, I'd strongly advise against it. Most spam comes from forged addresses. Most of those addresses don't exist so responding to spam will at minimum waste your ISP's bandwidth and processing power as mail goes from your client machine to your ISP's mail server where it generates a DSN (Delivery Status Notification aka a "Sorry, but I can't deliver this" message.) But sometimes the From address exists and it's not the address of the (alleged) spammer, meaning you're sending unsolicited bounces to an unrelated third party, often known as 'bounce spam.' Spammers often forge real addresses into their spew as revenge against people who've complained about them or to take advantage of stupid mail servers that accept then bounce mail to send any undelivered mail to some third party; think of it as an alternate target or second chance. Either way, your system is contributing to the spam problem by sending unsolicited bulk email. But let's say the (alleged) spammer has used their real address in the spam. Now you've just responded to the spammer, confirming your address is deliverable. Get ready for more spam. But let's get back to the original intent - to tell the message sender that their mail has not been successfully delivered. This should be done during the SMTP conversation by your mail server, usually with a milter (Sendmail) or equivalent add-on specific to your mail server. Ideally you reject mail before the DATA phase (reject early to save bandwidth, though you can't avoid accepting the content if you're going to use a content filter like SpamAssassin.) Rejecting during the SMTP conversation tells the connecting mail server the delivery failed and the reason why and leaves it to that system to notify the sender with a DSN. Only the connecting mail server can tell reliably where that DSN should be delivered to, so you're better off using the architecture and protocols as they were intended, rather than trying to second-guess them, badly. In many cases, you don't control your mail server so your only options are to try to badly jury-rig a rejection system or not send bounce messages at all (IMHO the right answer.) If you really want to do this, run your own mail system and do it properly. Mail administration is not especially easy or interesting but it looks good on a resume and you can make long-winded rants about it on public mailing lists. :) Realistically, you're better off creating two mail folders 'spammy' and 'very_spammy'. Put everything that scores between 5 and 10 in 'spammy', put everything that scores over 10 in 'very_spammy'. Periodically check the 'spammy' folder for false positives and move all the manually confirmed spam to 'very_spammy'. Then occasionally run sa-learn against the 'very_spammy' folder and either empty it to save disk space or save it for helping with the GA runs for the next major revision of SpamAssassin. Oh and in case you don't believe me about spammers forging innocent third-party addresses into their spam runs, I can provide personal evidence, off list. The only way I knew this had happened was because of bounce messages from broken mail systems. Apologies to others who are getting tired of my 'reject good, bounce bad' rant, :) -- Bob ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
