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Install a free SMTP spam filter for postfix Internet
I was looking for a good, easy to use, and free spam filter that works on OS X. After some searching, I found ASSP. It really works great, and is easy to use, set up, and admin. The only trick one needs to know is to change the postfix smtpd 'listen' port. You have to edit the file named master.cf located in /etc/postfix, and change the line that reads:
smtp inet n - n - - smtpd
to this:
2525 inet n - n - - smtpd
[robg adds: I haven't tested this one...]
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Install a free SMTP spam filter for postfix
Authored by: wgscott on Jan 13, '05 12:23:29PM
Another free unix mail filtering utility is procmail, which comes with OS X. (I actually get my mail on a SUN server first, so I use it on that.) I have used the (free) SpamBouncer configuration files for procmail for about a year now. In addition to filtering out spam and viruses, it allows you to sort your mail on the server.

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Install a free SMTP spam filter for postfix
Authored by: heavyboots on Jan 13, '05 12:33:07PM

Procmail is indeed great for filtering, but we've had our linux box taken to its knees by virus load. Proactive rejection of common virus-carrying attachments is one reason ASSP is so nice. Admittedly, an XServe has plenty of cycles to burn compared to our old 1.8ghz P3 but it is nice to just bounce the junk before it even lands on your hard drive.



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Install a free SMTP spam filter for postfix
Authored by: wgscott on Jan 13, '05 10:19:14PM

You can probably use both.

In my case procmail is nice because I only have a luser account on the mail server.



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Install a free SMTP spam filter for postfix
Authored by: heavyboots on Jan 13, '05 12:28:29PM

While I haven't done anything more than set up ASSP on a testbed Mac system, I can supply general confirmation it is a great little spam filter and dead easy to set up. We've been running it for over a year on our linux email box (with sendmail instead of postfix as the backend) and it works quite effectively.

One of the most important reasons it is so effective is that the spam is preprocessed out by ASSP before it is passed postfix/sendmail/etc rather than postprocessed out after you have accepted delivery and stored it in your mail queue (the normal case for most spam filters). The same applies to emails with virus-like attachment such as .exe, .pif, etc. By rejecting viruses before getting your mail program involved, you can potentially save a lot of processor power, disk space and bandwidth during a netwide viral outbreak.

Also, Beysian filters work far better with constant training. ASSP scores big here too with one company-wide spam address that anyone can use to send spams that ASSP missed back to the filter to help with training.



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