Install ASSP to filter spam at the SMTP level

Jan 23, '04 10:24:00AM

Contributed by: heavyboots

I've really been enjoying ASSP (Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy) since I installed it about a month ago. Basically, it can be used by anyone who has access to their SMTP daemon and has perl installed (ie, OS X, Linux or Windows), which probably includes anyone running their own server.

The ingenious bits about it are:

  1. Works with pretty much any SMTP program that can change the port it runs on (ie, Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, etc).
  2. Rejects spam at the SMTP port, before it ever gets saved to your hard drive. No weird bounces to deal with, etc. plus you get the chance to communicate directly with the bulk mailer program and tell them they were rejected as unsolicited mail.
  3. Easy configuration via web interface, many many bells and whistles such as auto-whitelisting of anyone you email, ability for any user on your system to forward spam messages that got through to help keep the filter trained, training mode to get it up and running well before beginning to actually reject (ie, throw away) unwanted mail.
Before using it, I was dealing with around 1,000 spams a week sometimes, and Mail's junk filter was barely keeping up. Now, I get one to five spams a week, and don't have to pay bandwidth charges on all that junkmail that Mail used to have to download.

Actually, I guess this is more of a pointer than a full-on hint since I'm not including install instructions (if you already have your SMTP connection set up and functioning, odds are you can set this up too. :)

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