From: "Nigel Henry" <cave.dnb@xxxxxxxxxx>
FWIW Bogofilter uses SpamAssassin internally. Experience indicates that
the FREE SpamAssassin (already part of FC distros) and the Spam Assassin
Rules Emporium rule sets, carefully user selected as needed, are more
effective than Bogofilter, which I understand is (quite) not free.
I did not realise it was using SpamAssassin. What do you mean by "(quite) not
free"?
Misinformation I had. I went and checked and it does appear to be
free. My ageing memory thought the folks who were complaining about
its performance were noting that it also cost them money. And when I
visited the bogofilter site I thought I caught mention of SpamAssassin
underneath its hood. It appears it does not. And that explains why
SpamAssassin, which supports an excellent Bayes filter AND rules
works better. My apologies, please.
http://www.rulesemporium.com/
This may help other users. I suspect you're already welded in to
bogofilter.
{o.o}
I wanted a spamfilter that would work directly with Kmail, and filter
downloaded mail. Someone suggested Bogofilter, so I went with it, and after
a few problems setting up the filters in Kmail, it appears to be working ok.
On the other machine I have installed SpamAssassin, but havn't got around to
setting up the filters in Kmail for it yet. I leave the mail on the ISPs POP3
server when I download the mail on that machine. I don't look forward to
building up another database again, but it will be interesting to see how
SpamAssassin compares to Bogofilter.
Question. Is there a way to FTP Kmails Spam list, and NonSpam list to the
other machines Kmail, so that I don't have to build up a new database from
scratch for SpamAssassin?
SpamAssassin works regardless of the MUA if it is done right. That way
there are no delays reading your mail.
My setup uses "fetchmail->procmail->spamassassin->spool directory" And
it uses dovecot to read from the spool directory and feed it to whatever
MUA I might want to use. It also does this no matter where I am in the
world if I can make an internet connection thanks to pop3s. I never
have to transfer my rules. {^_-}
Within my MUA I setup a lot of rules. But a little one liner SA rule is
all that is needed to shunt the spam aside to its own directory:
rewrite_header Subject *****SPAM***** _SCORE(00)_ **
That gives me spam headers that look like:
*****SPAM***** 023.4 <original subject>
I can then sort that directory or folder for subject and review the least
spammy for false alarms and ignore (or laugh at) the others.
I wonder how bogofilter is doing on the recent crop of image only spams
that are coming through. These are "mostly" caught by the BL rules that
score the BL hits for their reliability, other rules written by the
SARE ninjas, and some by Bayes if they include much text. For those who
tend to be in the first few minutes or hours of spam runs there is an
OCR plugin being developed that is showing some promise. We've also
generated an image characteristics based filter that shows some promise.
We're also collaborating to nail down vulnerability combinations that
some MUAs have. Some will display a gif image found anywhere in the
text. A simple test for malformed messages that claim a gif is plain
text has been proposed. I'm not sure of its disposition yet.
Even with the image spam I've stayed below 1 in 200 escaped spams on
when I happen to be among the first getting the spam and otherwise about
1 in 1000 escaped spams. Historically that was on 250-300 spams a day
and 1 in 1000 escaped. Of late spam has dropped off but the most pernicious
are still getting through - about 1 of a day's about 150 spams gets
through.
1) Rules REALLY help plug those holes Bayes alone can't touch.
2) Used properly SpamAssassin is MUA independent.
3) That means no scan time delays as you read your individual mail messages,
as one friend complained about. I helped him correct his setup. {^_-}
One downside for rabid open development people is that the SARE,
SpamAssassin Rules Emporium, rules development process takes place behind
closed doors. The rules are released Open Source once they are configured
and characterized to operate within parameters for the rule set in which
they fit. This delays the spammer's adaptation process. It's a war. And
every little edge helps.
(If BogoFilter is more effective than SA's Bayes alone I wonder if
someone could hack it into SA in place of the SA Bayes. I don't think
it can be formally folded it SA's Bayes (which is exceptionally good)
due to Apache vs GPL issues.)
{^_^}
