Countering spam

[bill at horne.net (Bill Horne)]

Rich Braun wrote:
> TheBlueSage wrote:
>   
>> I used to use exim3, and loved being able to add domains and
>> 'virtusertable' addresses on the fly. Now I have to reload postfix
>> config every time. I also don't like my spam filter setup (spamassassin,
>> as I still get over 50 spam a day, using a spam setting of 5.0 . ...
>> I was wondering what the latest and greatest solutions out there were,
>> as I haven't checked since I put postfix in nearly three years ago!
>>     
>
> I have been using exim4+spamassassin for about 2 years and am still very
> satisfied with it overall, though spamassassin's effectiveness has gone down
> quite a lot.  (Any tool that becomes broadly popular will become the target of
> spammers.  They learn the rules for a default spamassassin configuration, pass
> their messages through it before sending, and every month more of them get
> through.)
>
> So if you want to run your own mail server you have to fine-tune customized
> rules in order to stay ahead of the spammers.  I massively customized my
> configuration with a lot of exim rules; I reject messages at each step of the
> SMTP protocol, and that takes care of 90% of spam attempts--look for
> greylisting, it works *very* well.  I feed the remaining 10% into Spamassassin
> and have to add a new rule every once in a while.
>
> My only complaint about Spamassassin is that writing new rules is a tedious
> command-line driven procedure which requires repeated testing.  New rules can
> be risky in a production environment; maybe someone has come up with a more
> automated way to craft new rules that don't abruptly cause false-positive or
> false-negatives or other problems the way so many of my Spamassassin attempts
> at new rules come out.  New releases of spamassassin are too infrequent, alas;
> the spammers have many months between each release to develop new attacks. 
> Works OK for me because I only have a personal mail server these days.
>
> Exim4 plus mysql is a win, by comparison; my initial deployment took a week or
> so and I haven't had to touch it much since.  Note that exim4 is far more
> powerful than exim3 when it comes to writing custom configs.
>
> -rich
> (posting from Manila)
>   

Rich,

Please consider posting your config: I also run Exim4, and my spam count 
has been rising. I also use Razor, and I'm curious if you've tried it.

TIA.

Bill Horne



-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.