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SpamAssassin
book

SpamAssassin

by Alan Schwartz
July 2004
Intermediate to advanced
224 pages
6h 13m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Overview

The annoyance factor for individual users whose email is crammedwith pitches for pornography, absurd moneymaking schemes, anddubious health products is fierce. But for organizations, the costof spam in lost productivity and burned bandwidth is astronomical.While society is grappling with a solution to the burgeoning crisisof spam proliferation, the pressure is on system administrators tofind a solution to this massive problem in-house. And fast. Sysadmins can field scores of complaints and spend months testingsoftware suites that turn out to be too aggressive, too passive, ortoo complicated to setup only to discover that SpamAssassin (SA),the leading open source spam-fighting tool, is free, flexible,powerful, highly-regarded, and remarkably effective. The drawback?SpamAssassin's lack of published documentation. SpamAssassinby Alan Schwartz, is the only published resource devoted toSpamAssassin and how to integrate it effectively into yournetworks. This clear, concise guide clarifies the installation,configuration, and use of the SpamAssassin spam-checking system(versions 2.63 and 3.0) for Unix system administrators using thePostfix, Sendmail, Exim, or qmail mail servers, helpingadministrators make the right integration decision for theirparticular environments. It covers concrete advice on how to:

  • Customize SpamAssassin's rules, and even create new ones TrainSpamAssassin's Bayesian classifier, a statistical engine fordetecting spam, to optimize it for the sort of email that youtypically receive

  • Block specific addresses, hosts, and domains using third-partyblacklists like the one maintained by Spamcop.net.

  • Whitelist known good sources of email, so that messages fromclients, coworkers, and friends aren't inadvertently lost.

  • Configure SpamAssassin to work with newer spam-filteringmethods such as Hashcash (www.hashcash.org) and Sender PolicyFramework (SPF).

  • Sys admins, network administrators, and ISPs pay for spam withhours of experimentation and tedious junk email management, frayeduser tempers, and their sanity. SpamAssassin, together with thisessential book, give you the tools you need to take back yourorganization's inboxes. "Detailed, accurate andinformative--recommended for spam-filtering beginners and expertsalike." --Justin Mason, SpamAssassin development team

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    Publisher Resources

    ISBN: 0596007078Errata Page