[ale] suggestions for anti-spam filtering software.

[Nathan J. Underwood]

I agree, Spam Assassin is definately the way to go.  I also agree on the box, I
was surprised by the resources that this little setup took (I've got around 30
users [who seem to have an affinity for signing up for any 'free widget'
available online]).  I've got a 400MHz box with 128MB RAM, and it seems to do
the trick.  I'm also running qmail on the box, as I found it to be easier to
configure than sendmail, and a great deal more secure.  

Quoting Matt Smith <msmith at risklabs.com>:

> SPAM ASSASSIN!!
> 
> I can't tell you how much my life has changed since getting this up and
> running.  
> 
> Basically I route all inbound email to the SA box, with a direct feed to the
> exchange server being the fallback.  The SA box crunches the emails,
> forwards on to the exchange box.  Spam emails get flagged in the Subject,
> Header, and the body is replaced with a text report of the spam status
> (original message is attached to prevent outlook auto-preview from giving
> any hints to the spammers).  
> 
> You can configure rules in outlook to auto delete/sort on the subject, but I
> recommend using the header..  I had some people forward me messages that
> were incorrectly marked as spam so I could whitelist them but when I used
> the subject to auto-delete, their messages got deleted too - so using the
> header prevents that.
> 
> The only problem I had was memory.. you can't run this on a crappy P100 with
> 32mb of ram you have laying around.. It's all in perl, so it can be a
> resource hog.  Plus the slower the box, the longer the mail queue gets as
> you get lots of inbound messages.
> 
> Another disappointing thing is that with exchange there isn't a good way to
> get the spam that sneaks through the SA box back to it so you can have it
> learn the details of it.  Exchange doesn't include all the good header info
> when forwarding, and I'm not sure that some of the macros available for
> extracting the header info really do what's needed once the mail gets back
> to the SA box..  Only time will tell.
> 
> There are some great how-to's available for setting up procmail/postfix to
> do this.. or even sendmail/milter.. there are some missing pieces but it's
> not that hard to figure out.
> 
> Good luck!
> 
> --Matt
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cole [mailto:JohnC at LGEFCU.org]
> Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 5:44 PM
> To: 'ale at ale.org'
> Subject: [ale] suggestions for anti-spam filtering software.
> 
> 
> Howdy all!
> 
> I'm currently looking for some anti-spam filtering software.  What I need is
> for it to be a filtering gateway before it reaches our Exchange server (or
> on our exchange server if that works as well).
> 
> I have seen 2 good options, Anti-Spam Mail Proxy
> http://assp.sourceforge.net/ or Spam Assassin.  Which would ya'll suggest?
> What I need is something relatively simple to understand once it is in place
> and preferably with a GUI.
> 
> Pros/Cons for this type of situation would be welcome.
> 
> Thank you,
> John Cole, TICSA
> 
> Help Desk Administrator
> Lockheed Georgia Employees' Federal Credit Union
> 430 Commerce Park Drive
> Marietta, GA 30060 
> (770) 424-0060
> (800) 541-8921 
> jcole at lgefcu.org
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-- 
Nathan J. Underwood
nathan at cybertechcafe.net
http://www.cybertechcafe.net
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