tips for fighting spams discussion (Crontab Entry)

[Brendan Chard]

What does your crontab entry look like for the nightly processing of the
spamlearn folders?

-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf
Of Andy Moran
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 8:09 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: tips for fighting spams discussion

I don't know about your first and third question, but for #2:

> 2) Said in step (3) to point the messages to null. So  it means the
> messages will be filtered before it goes to null?

Yes.  MailScanner runs before sendmail reads any aliases and delivers it.


We don't use this "forward spam messages" methods, especially since I'm
not convinced the bayesian filter won't learn incorrectly on them.  All
the spams it is getting are coming from your users and going to a spam@
address.  What will keep it from learning that these certain users
aren't the spammers?

What we use instead is an IMAP folder approach.    Users create a folder
called "spamlearn".  Any spams they get they move into that folder.
Every night a cron job collects messages from these folders and feeds
them to sa-learn.  It then empties the mailbox.  The user knows they got
processed because their mailbox empties out.

--Andy

kfliong wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I got this tips from MailWatch forum. I think that this is a splendid tips
> that most of the veteran might already know. But for newbies like me, it's
> quite interesting. Anyway, it's posted by Julian (not sure if it's the
same
> MS julian) and I have some questions about it.
>
> Here is the method posted to help fight spams that got through mailscanner
> and went to the user.
> ---------
> Here's how I do it:
> 1. Choose an e-mail address for recalling the missed spam on the
> MailScanner server (ie,
> <mailto:spam at mailscanner.mydomain.com>spam at mailscanner.mydomain.com)
> 2. Add "To:
> <mailto:spam at mailscanner.mydomain.com>spam at mailscanner.mydomain.com yes"
to
> "Is Definitely Spam" rules pointed to.
> 3. Add an aliases "spam: /dev/null" on the MailScanner server. The mail
> will go to bitbucket if released by mistake.
> 4. Tell the user to redirect the mail to the e-mail address. It should be
> blacklisted and be quarantined.
> 5. Exam the mail and learn the message as spam in MailWatch if needed.
> ---------
>
> Here are my questions:
>
> 1) does the "is definitely spam" feature tied to sa-learn therefore making
> mailscanner learn that this is spam or it uses other method to identify
the
> spam? Or how exactly does "is definitely spam" works?
>
> 2) Said in step (3) to point the messages to null. So  it means the
> messages will be filtered before it goes to null?
>
> 3) In step (4) the users will be able to point all spams that they receive
> to "spam at domain.com" and therefore lifting the workload from email admins
> but as I understand, forwarding mails will add a ">" in front of the
> messages and doesn't sa-learn have problems learning these messages?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
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