Blocking Spam

[jdow]

From: "Jeffrey Ross" <jeff at bubble.org>
> 
> Todd Simi wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm getting spammed to death.  I'm running sendmail and ClamAV.
>>
>> Is there a way of filtering mail by keyword?  I seem to get 
>> a few particular emails from different sources, but they are
>> all the same messages.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Todd
>>
>>
>>   
> Spamassassin is the way to go, but make sure you use sa-update to update 
> the rules on a daily basis.  In addition you may want to consider the  
> "FuzzyOCR" plugin which will (help?) stop the annoying image spam (I 
> haven't seen one of those in months).
> 
> Be forewarned,  spamassassin can be a memory pig, I start it with the 
> following command:
> 
> /usr/bin/spamd -c -m 20 -d -r /var/run/spamd.pid
> 
> Right now there are three spamd processes running each using roughly 
> 80Meg of memory for a total of ~240Meg.  If I start getting a lot of 
> incoming email the number of processes will climb and so will the memory 
> usage.

Also make sure you run up a suitable collection of SARE rules for
SpamAssassin. http://www.rulesemporium.com/. Read the descriptions of
the various sets of rules and pick what is appropriate for your setup.
(The FuzzyOCR plugin can be found through the SpamAssassin wiki if you
go to the plugins page. It is in development. 3.41 is supposed to be
the current one recommended for users rather than testers. (I REALLY
need to update from the version I am using. But the pressure's low.
Even the old version I am using does excellently.))

It reads like Todd is running a personal mail service. So tools like
greylisting may and may not help him mostly modulo his patience with
slightly delayed email messages and whether he is using fetchmail or
a real smtp installation.

{^_^}   Joanne