A Few Questions About Spamasssassin For A Potentia

[nuppence]

Hi,

 

I have just had a new tower built running XP Pro and Outlook XP (2003). I have been using web-based Yahoo! Mail for some years now but with the new system I plan to use YahooPOPs! (YP), which emulates a POP3/SMTP server and enables popular email clients like Outlook to download and send emails from [web-based] Yahoo! accounts.

 

Now that YahooPOPs! is up and running I need to decide on which spam filtering software to use. The leading contenders are SpamAssassin and SpamCombat (from G-Lock). At this time I am leaning towards SpamAssassin because they seem to be the actual innovators and developers of this kind of filter while G-Lock appears to have "borrowed" quite a bit of SA's technology. I could very well be wrong but that is how I feel.

 

The only "problem" that I am finding with SpamAssassin is that it typically "resides" on an ISP's server. As I plan to switch to a low-cost ISP that does not use SA I'm hoping to do a lot of research on how it actually works, which is where the TotalChoice Hosting Forums come into play. I have done a fair amount of browsing at the SpamAssassin News site (link is for their Downloads page) and I'm still not sure which version I should use. I would love to ask this question and many others at a forum site that is devoted to SpamAssassin (and preferably "newbie-tolerant") but I cannot seem to find a site that covers SA and is not geared towards techies (Website Administrators, etc.). I have already read through the 3 threads in the Backend Services Forum that address some aspects of SpamAssassin but I have yet to find a good overall "tutorial" for end-users who are not Administors.

 

The people at TotalChoice seem to be very friendly and willing to help out others who are stumped by a problem such as mine. I am hoping that someone can either refer me to a good resource for learning and using SpamAssassin or explain the necessary requirements. I am quite willing to learn and I am capable of "taking the ball and running with it" once the ball has been tossed my way.

 

I appreciate your taking the time to read this. Thank you. Thumbs Up

[ThumpAZ]

The primary problem you will find (and it seems you are realizing this now) is that Anti-SPAM software does reside at the server level. Everything else that I know of for a local machine is just filtering software that either dumps items into a different folder or deletes them. It does not do away with the influx of SPAM because it will not truly bounce a message to trick the sender into thinking the account does not exist. It cannot decrease download times for legitimate email, as you still have to download the SPAM as well.

If SPAM is such an issue that you are looking for an alternative, you may want to research ISPs based on their Anti-SPAM offerings. Do they use and of the DNSBLs out there? Do they have something to the likes of SA on their servers? Can you setup filters and your own block lists?

 

There are softwares out there that allow you to check the mail at the server before you download it, but those require actual POP or IMAP access. And these are still not AS softwares, they just act similar in some of their more manual functionalities. The name of a popular one with folks around here escapes me right this second.

 

I know that everyone is out for the lowest cost, but lower cost typically (not true with TCH from what I have seen) means lower level of service or offerrings. If you go to that lower cost ISP, you might want to look into the idea of purchasing your own domain name for ($10.95/year at TCH) and getting a hosting plan (from $4 at TCH) and hosting your own email that way. Then you get the SA you are wanting and a really good platform to use that email with... webmail as well as true POP and SMTP access. And you get our friendly faces and exceptional support to boot!

The latter of this message is just my two cents, after having been in admin for some time and learning that trying to run a mail server in this day and age of relentless and ruthless spammers is a graying and balding job (just look at my avatar, man!!!)

Edited March 18, 2004 by TCH-Glenn

[whoisjohngalt]

Has TCH thought about using a DNS BlackList (dnsbl) on the mail server?

 

http://www.exim.org/howto/rbl.html

 

This HOWTO describes how to set it up in Exim. When I was running my domain at my house with Sendmail, these blacklists worked *GREAT* at booting spam off the system.

[nuppence]

Thank you everyone for the replies. I think I'll give SpamPal a try. SpamCombat & SpamAssassin are fine products, I'm sure, but I really like the FAQs, setup help (forums) that SpamPal offers.

 

FYI, Features chart for SpamPal and some of its major competitors, such as:

 

K9

POPFile

SpamAssassin

SAProxy

Spamihilator

SpamKiller

AntiSpamWare

SpamNet

MailWasher Free

MailWasher Pro

 

G-Lock's SpamCombat may be too new because they're not in the comparison chart.

 

Last, but not least, to whoisjohngalt: It's very refreshing to see (meet - ?) another Ayn Rand devotee. I wish there were more. Good sig, too! Thumbs Up

[TCH-Bruce]

nuppence,

 

Out of your list of competitors for SpamPal I have used MailWasher Free and it didn't work as well as I thought it should. I have since switched to using K9 (also free) and it is catching 99.8% of all Spam and directing to my delete folder.

 

I also looked over the comparison chart between SpamPal and K9 and it is not current. There are many things that K9 does, that they say it doesn't. Also, K9 doesn't require plugins to do some of the things SpamPal does. And the footprint for K9 is 1/4 that of SpamPal.

Edited March 26, 2004 by TCH-Bruce

[Guest]

Has TCH thought about using a DNS BlackList (dnsbl) on the mail server?

I get concerned about false positives with the blacklist systems. I help maintain an opt-in email list, and am seeing more notices of being blocked because of a blacklist on the IP, because of someone else on the shared server. We're painted with the slop from an overly broad brush, with no real recourse.

 

The challenge/response system seems (from this end of the list) to be a reasonable alternative, but I haven't tried it from the user side.

 

As with all discussions of methods and means, YMMV (your mileage may vary).

 

--Mary Jo

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