I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Spambouncer
(http://www.best.com/~ariel/nospam/). It was through that package that I
found this list. In fact, my desire to filter spam drove my willingness
to take the plunge and finally start learning how to use procmail. The
package comes with a sample .procmailrc. I was surprised how easy it was
to use the rules as examples to create my own rules. I've hardly had to
look at the man page at all. (I'd still probably buy a procmail Nutshell
book, though.)
I agree that Spambouncer (Lite) is a very good set of rules. I too
started off with procmail because of it, and my current .procmailrc
is heavily influenced by what I learned from Spambouncer.
I have a few problems with it, however. One is the size of the file -
about 2400 lines for Spambouncer Lite. My own set of recipies, which
are at least as effective, are only about 175 lines. I can't justify
churning through 64k of recipies when 95+% of my email is non-spam,
and the rest is reliably filtered. One good thing about the size is that
it is what encouraged to start writing my own recipies!
Most of that size is domain name blacklisting, which IMHO, is usually
more trouble than it is worth. There is also a lot of very specific
spam checks that will never catch another spam. How ofter do
you get a spam with the exact subject:
"Collect on your judicial claims that are up to 7 years old" ???
Then there are also little things such as blocking free email sites by
default, and the fact that each recipe adds the same header to the spam,
so you can't tell rule which matched up.
I sent e-mail to Catherine last week asking how to help add to the list
of known spammers but haven't heard back. Are you on this list,
Catherine? Hello?)
I'd like to hear from other satisfied (or dissatisfied) Spambouncer
users -- please reply either to this list or via e-mail.
You might consider placing your own rules before the INCLUDERC for
SpamBouncer, and see how many spams are caught. Over time, you
will probably notice more and more spam filtered by your recipes, and
eventually you will be able to comment out Spam Bouncer (unless you
want to keep it around as a automated spam responder).
Jeff Thieleke