I have gotten SpamAssassin set up as a mail proxy so that all likely
spam are tagged as such and automatically filtered to a separate
mailbox, where I can check for false positives at my convenience.
Am I nuts in thinking that nearly everyone on the Internet would like a
similar service, and many of them are willing to pay for it?
All that seems necessary is a regular x86 Linux box running
SpamAssassin, qmail, procmail, Apache, and a web interface to make
configuring all this trivial. As I have done below, you could set this
up with a well-known public email address and a private one only used by
this server.
One could even avoid the step of having public vs. private email
addresses by creating a filter on your mail user agent (e.g., Outlook)
to send all mail to this server that does not have a X-Spam-Status
header. The server would run SpamAssassin on the mail and forward the
mail back to the user. All of this could and should be configured with
a single forms web page that also has you enter your credit card. How
does $50 a year sound for the service, with a money back guarantee, of
course? Note that spamcop.net provides something similar, but they do
not offer the public/private address option described below.
Well, does anyone want to put this together? I'd be willing to pay the
upfront costs for the business.
Using SpamAssassin as a Mail Relay for Personal Use
----------------------------------------------------------------
These steps assume the following, so substitute as necessary:
- Your public email address is [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- You have an unpublicized private address [EMAIL PROTECTED] where
you actually get your mail
- Someone provides you an account of [EMAIL PROTECTED] for running
SpamAssassin as a proxy
- Your UNIX login is "user"
- The location of the SpamAssassin executable is /usr/bin/spamassassin
- The location of the procmail executable is /usr/bin/procmail
1. Find a kind soul who will give you an account on his/her Unix box
that already has SpamAssassin and procmail installed.
2. Create a .forward file in your home directory containing the below
lines:
"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #user"
3. Create a .procmailrc file in your home directory containing
the below lines:
:0fw
| /usr/bin/spamassassin -P
:0 # All messages
! [EMAIL PROTECTED] # Your private address
The above lines filter all incoming mail through SpamAssassin and tag
probable spam with a unique header, X-Spam-Flag: YES. It then forwards
all mail (including the spam) on to your private address.
4. Now, you should be ready to send some test emails and ensure
everything works as expected. First, send yourself a test email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] that doesn't contain anything suspicious. You
should receive it normally, but there will be a header containing
X-Spam-Status: No. Also send yourself an obvious spam mail and check to
be sure it is marked as spam.
5. Create a Spam folder in your mail client to check for false
positives. Create a new mail filtering rule (you probably want this to
be your first one) along the lines of this (which is for Outlook 2002):
Apply this rule after message arrives with X-Spam-Flag: YES
in the message header and move it to the Spam folder
6. Once you've confirmed that the setup is working, set
[EMAIL PROTECTED] to forward to [EMAIL PROTECTED] instead of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
7. When there is a false positive (mail you really want to get that's
marked as spam) from [EMAIL PROTECTED], edit
.spamassassinrc/user_prefs on the Unix box and add the following line:
whitelist_from [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://www.dankohn.com/> <tel:+1-650-327-2600>
Essays announced on <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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