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Chapter 8; Using SpamAssassin

As spam increased in volume and became more of a problem, anti-spam techniques were developed to counteract it. Tools to block spam were developed by a group of professionals. These tools were not always automated, but when used by system administrators of large sites, they could successfully filter spam for a large number of users. In response, spammers evolved their techniques to increase the number of spams delivered by working around and through the filters. As spam filters improved, spammers designed other methods of bypassing the filters and the cycle repeated. This resulted in the development of both spam and anti-spam techniques and tools over a number of years. This evolutionary process continues today.

Anti-spam tools use a wide range of techniques to reduce the volume of spam received by a user. A number of these techniques will be described in this chapter. SpamAssassin is an important Open Source tool that we will examine in the light of the various techniques it uses to filter spam.

BOOK DETAILS   Paperback, 220 pages Released: Sept 2004 ISBN: 1904811124 Author: Alistair McDonald

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Intro
1. Introducing Spam
2. Spam and Anti-Spam Techniques
3. Open Relays
4. Protecting Email Addresses
5. Detecting Spam
6. Installing SpamAssassin
7. Configuration Files
8. Using SpamAssassin
9. Bayesian Filtering
10. Look and Feel
11. Network Tests
12. Rules
13. Improving Filtering
14. Performance
15. Housekeeping and Reporting
16. Building an Anti-Spam Gateway
17. Email Clients
18. Choosing other Spam Tools
Appendix A
Index
 

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