Automatic spam deletion service

[Julian Field]

In response to a couple of requests, I thought I would post this to the
list so it gets in the archives, and I don't end up repeating myself in
future months.

Here we have an automatic spam deletion service. When a user opts in, they
can set a threshold score above which all spam to them will be deleted.
Between our normal threshold (6) and the threshold they set, the spam is
tagged but still delivered. This means they still get borderline spam if
they choose to, but all the definite spam will be deleted before delivery.

The front-end is a web interface in PHP which will require some
modification for your own site, as it accesses a back-end SQL server (in
our case Microsoft SQL Server 2000) to store the data. Use a .htaccess file
to provide username/password authentication for it. The mkthresholddb
script which builds the DB file (used by MailScanner) from the SQL server
has a bit of clever code in it which you will need to change, as it is used
to look up all the aliases which deliver to the person whose account is
listed in the SQL table. So, for example, it is given "jkf" and will return
all of
         jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk
         sysjkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk
         j.field at ecs.soton.ac.uk
         j.k.field at ecs.soton.ac.uk
and any other aliases which also resolve to just "jkf". This is all pulled
from a NIS map where we store the information.

But hopefully there is enough here that it will save you all most of the
work required in setting up a service like this. It has been very well
received by our users, particularly those who don't know much about mail
filtering and so always have deleted their spam by hand even though its
subject line is tagged to enable automatic filtering.

End of sales pitch, now the guts.....

In CustomConfig.pm, this line is added:
require 'MailScanner/ECSthresholds.pm';

Then in /opt/MailScanner/lib/MailScanner we put the "ECSthresholds.pm" file
which is attached. This would go in /usr/lib/MailScanner/MailScanner on an
RPM-based Linux system. My code is written for Solaris.

There is then a cron job
3,18,33,48 * * * * /usr/local/sbin/mkthresholddb >/dev/null 2>&1
which calls the "mkthresholddb" script which is attached. This creates the
DB file used by MailScanner.

To inspect the database table (you may also find this useful to work out
the database table design), there is a tool "dumpthresholddb" which does
exactly what its name suggests.

The front end is implemented by the "index.php" file which is attached.
This provides the web interface used by the users to configure their
settings, in conjunction with a .htaccess file to provide the
username/password authentication.

The MailScanner configuration is handled by these lines in MailScanner.conf:
Required SpamAssassin Score = 6
High SpamAssassin Score = &ECSthreshold
Spam Actions = deliver
High Scoring Spam Actions = &ECSspamaction
Spam Lists To Reach High Score = 1

The only line that might cause you some thought is the last one. We want to
delete any spam caught by a MailScanner "Spam List" (i.e. an RBL) to be
deleted, if the user has opted into the auto-deletion system.

The backend in our case is a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database, accessed
via the Sybase DBD drivers. But you could use any old SQL server, I'm sure
Postgres or mySQL would work fine.

Hopefully that is all enough to get you going.

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Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
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To leave, send    leave mailscanner    to jiscmail at jiscmail.ac.uk
Before posting, please see the Most Asked Questions at
http://www.mailscanner.biz/maq/     and the archives at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/mailscanner.html