SpamAssassin 2.62

[Gordon Darling]

SpamAssassin 2.62
- A mail filter which attempts to identify spam using text analysis.

About:
SpamAssassin is a mail filter that uses a wide range of heuristic tests on
mail headers and body text to identify spam. Once identified, the mail can
then be optionally tagged as spam for later filtering. It provides a
command line tool to perform filtering, a client-server system to filter
large volumes of mail, and Mail::SpamAssassin, a set of Perl modules that
implement a Mail::Audit plugin -- allowing SpamAssassin to be used in a
Mail::Audit filter, a spam-protection proxy POP/IMAP server, or almost
anywhere.

Changes:
This release fixes a bug which caused report_safe_copy_headers to reverse
the order of the Received headers, a bug which caused reporting to not
remove message markup before being learned by Bayes, a bug which caused
the spamd temporary init directory to not be removed in some situations,
several bugs in the Bayes system caused by DB_File oddities, and two bugs
related to Received line generation and parsing. It modifies HABEAS_SWE to
function even if the Habeas headers are out of their normal order and
modifies two rules to reduce false positives.

Release focus: Minor bugfixes
License: Artistic License
Project URL: http://freshmeat.net/projects/spamassassin/
Homepage: http://www.spamassassin.org
Tar/GZ:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_tgz/downloads.html
Tar/BZ2:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_bz2/downloads.html
Zip:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_zip/downloads.html
RPM package:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_rpm/downloads.html

Regards
Gordon

 

[John Corliss]

SpamAssassin 2.62
- A mail filter which attempts to identify spam using text analysis.

About:
SpamAssassin is a mail filter that uses a wide range of heuristic tests on
mail headers and body text to identify spam. Once identified, the mail can
then be optionally tagged as spam for later filtering. It provides a
command line tool to perform filtering, a client-server system to filter
large volumes of mail, and Mail::SpamAssassin, a set of Perl modules that
implement a Mail::Audit plugin -- allowing SpamAssassin to be used in a
Mail::Audit filter, a spam-protection proxy POP/IMAP server, or almost
anywhere.

Changes:
This release fixes a bug which caused report_safe_copy_headers to reverse
the order of the Received headers, a bug which caused reporting to not
remove message markup before being learned by Bayes, a bug which caused
the spamd temporary init directory to not be removed in some situations,
several bugs in the Bayes system caused by DB_File oddities, and two bugs
related to Received line generation and parsing. It modifies HABEAS_SWE to
function even if the Habeas headers are out of their normal order and
modifies two rules to reduce false positives.

Release focus: Minor bugfixes
License: Artistic License
Project URL: http://freshmeat.net/projects/spamassassin/
Homepage: http://www.spamassassin.org
Tar/GZ:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_tgz/downloads.html
Tar/BZ2:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_bz2/downloads.html
Zip:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_zip/downloads.html
RPM package:
http://freshmeat.net/redir/spamassassin/15434/url_rpm/downloads.html

This is the program my ISP uses to filter user email accounts (if you
request it). It works very nicely. Cut my spam (before I changed my
account user name) down from about 100 spams/day to about 3/day.
However, it is a "little biased towards Perl and Unix." Read the
overview given here:

http://mcd.perlmonk.org/pop3proxy/

 

[Gordon Darling]

snip

This is the program my ISP uses to filter user email accounts (if you
request it). It works very nicely. Cut my spam (before I changed my
account user name) down from about 100 spams/day to about 3/day.
However, it is a "little biased towards Perl and Unix." Read the
overview given here:

http://mcd.perlmonk.org/pop3proxy/

It's also the program I run on my box that handles all incoming mail. It
is (over time) very, very effective indeed. The Bayesian filter seems to
be one of the best around.

Thanks for the additional link, John.

Regards
Gordon

 

[John Corliss]

It's also the program I run on my box that handles all incoming mail. It
is (over time) very, very effective indeed. The Bayesian filter seems to
be one of the best around.

Thanks for the additional link, John.

Regards
Gordon

Gordon,
Do you use a Windows port and if so, which?

TIA

 

[Gordon Darling]

Gordon,
Do you use a Windows port and if so, which?

TIA

Sorry, I don't John. I'm down to one MS Box (win 98SE) that is used by my
daughter and it goes nowhere near the Internet! All the others are
Linux/BSD (and one Solaris box) and spamassasin runs on an old Pentium 233
running Mandrake 9.2. I use Evolution to download mail from multiple
accounts, pipe the messages through spamassassin's spamd/spamc daemon then
Evolution's rules distribute the messages to local mailboxes or the
Junk folder.

Anyone in the group using SpamAssassin on a Windows box???

Regards
Gordon

 

[John Corliss]

Sorry, I don't John. I'm down to one MS Box (win 98SE) that is used by my
daughter and it goes nowhere near the Internet! All the others are
Linux/BSD (and one Solaris box) and spamassasin runs on an old Pentium 233
running Mandrake 9.2. I use Evolution to download mail from multiple
accounts, pipe the messages through spamassassin's spamd/spamc daemon then
Evolution's rules distribute the messages to local mailboxes or the
Junk folder.

Anyone in the group using SpamAssassin on a Windows box???

I know that Windows ports are supposed to be being tracked at this
page now:

http://news.spamassassin.org/

but I couldn't find mention of any freeware clientside Windows ports
there (must be missing something obvious.) There is one (noSPAMtoday!)
which claims to be freeware, but adds "a short note at the end of all
scanned mails".

That said, the obsolete page at:

http://spamassassin.taint.org/where.html

lists a few ports, most of which are commercial. This one seems to be
the exception:

http://mcd.perlmonk.org/pop3proxy/

but with this caveat:

"Installing this proxy is not for the faint of heart - SpamAssassin is
not supported on Win32 platforms, and you'll need to be comfortable
with downloading, uncompressing, installing, and copying files, as
well as editing text configuration files. You might need to know a
little about networking, and if your client is not one we've tested
with, you might need to learn a little about the POP3 protocol. But
generally speaking, anyone comfortable with installing Perl on their
Win32 platform will be able to make use of this proxy."

FWIW I noticed this on SpamAssassin's main page:

"our license will be changing with SpamAssassin 2.70; from that
version on we will be using the Apache Software License."

Here's an explanation:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html#WhatDoesItMEAN

Has anybody found any good freeware ports of SpamAssassin? This seems
to be the absolute best spam filter program going.

 

[Richard Steven Hack]

"Installing this proxy is not for the faint of heart - SpamAssassin is
not supported on Win32 platforms, and you'll need to be comfortable
with downloading, uncompressing, installing, and copying files, as
well as editing text configuration files. You might need to know a
little about networking, and if your client is not one we've tested
with, you might need to learn a little about the POP3 protocol. But
generally speaking, anyone comfortable with installing Perl on their
Win32 platform will be able to make use of this proxy."

In other words, not for Windows types that can only point and click,
heh, heh.

Imagine, the nerve of them requiring people to know what they're
doing.