Setting up a rejection limit

[The Doctor <do...@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca>]

How can one use user_prefs to tell spamassassin to reject spam
tagged at level N at just send it back to them?
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insert you thought here.

Re: Setting up a rejection limit

[Matt Kettler <mk...@comcast.net>]

At 09:27 AM 5/22/2005, guenther wrote:
>On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 07:03 -0600, The Doctor wrote:
> > How can one use user_prefs to tell spamassassin to reject spam
> > tagged at level N at just send it back to them?
>
>You can't.
>
>SA is not designed to delete, deliver or bounce mail. It is designed to
>scan and identify SPAM only. Any action taken (like delivering or
>deleting) based on SA's judgment is another apps duty.
>
>Besides, bouncing SPAM is not good practice. You'll often hit accounts
>that are not in use at all or by innocent third party. Let your MTA or
>MUA move them to a dedicated SPAM box or simply delete them, if you are
>really sure not to get false positives.

Bouncing spam (sending it back after delivery) is a bad idea, and I will 
outright blacklist the entire domain of anyone who sends me back a spam 
forged in my name after detecting that it's spam, no questions asked. 
That's horribly bad practice, and I view it as an intentional contribution 
to a DDoS attack.

Unlike bouncing, rejecting spam (at the SMTP layer before accepting the 
DATA command) is perfectly reasonable.

However, performing a reject is outside of spamassassin's abilities. SA is 
designed to be very generic so it can be used at the MTA, MDA or MUA level. 
Part of accomplishing this is limiting SA to simply scanning and marking 
the message.

Deciding what to do with the message needs to be done by the tool above SA. 
So if you use a MTA layer integration that calls SA before completing the 
SMTP data phase, that tool can implement a reject. If you're using 
procmail, rejection is impossible, as you're already at the MDA and the 
SMTP transfer is long since done and over with.

If you want to do rejection (not bouncing) you'll need to choose an MTA 
integration that closely couples to your MTA and can correctly issue a 
reject. There are several different tools that do this, such as mimedefang 
for sendmail and qmail-scanner for qmail. But each of these tools is 
specific to one MTA, and there aren't any that I know of that work for 
multiple different MTA packages (i.e.: Sendmail, Exim, postfix, and qmail.)

Re[2]: Setting up a rejection limit

[Robert Menschel <Ro...@Menschel.net>]

Hello Sandy,

Monday, May 23, 2005, 7:19:13 AM, you wrote:

>> > How can one use user_prefs to tell spamassassin to reject spam
>> > tagged at level N at just send it back to them?
>>
>> You can't.
>>
>> SA is not designed to delete, deliver or bounce mail. It is designed to
>> scan and identify SPAM only. Any action taken (like delivering or
>> deleting) based on SA's judgment is another apps duty

SS> At least once a week someone asks how to have Spamassassin delete mail.
SS> Could this be added to the FAQ?  (There's already a question in the FAQ "How
SS> do I get SpamAssassin to delete spam and is it a good idea?" but the answer
SS> talks about why it's a bad idea and doesn't really make the point that
SS> SpamAssassin in and of itself is a scanner only and cannot delete email.)

Done.

> SpamAssassin itself will not delete any emails.

Bob Menschel

Re: Setting up a rejection limit

[Sandy S <sa...@boreal.org>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "guenther" <gu...@rudersport.de>
To: "The Doctor" <do...@doctor.nl2k.ab.ca>
Cc: <us...@spamassassin.apache.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2005 8:27 AM
Subject: Re: Setting up a rejection limit


> On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 07:03 -0600, The Doctor wrote:
> > How can one use user_prefs to tell spamassassin to reject spam
> > tagged at level N at just send it back to them?
>
> You can't.
>
> SA is not designed to delete, deliver or bounce mail. It is designed to
> scan and identify SPAM only. Any action taken (like delivering or
> deleting) based on SA's judgment is another apps duty

At least once a week someone asks how to have Spamassassin delete mail.
Could this be added to the FAQ?  (There's already a question in the FAQ "How
do I get SpamAssassin to delete spam and is it a good idea?" but the answer
talks about why it's a bad idea and doesn't really make the point that
SpamAssassin in and of itself is a scanner only and cannot delete email.)

Sandy

Re: Setting up a rejection limit

[guenther <gu...@rudersport.de>]

On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 07:03 -0600, The Doctor wrote:
> How can one use user_prefs to tell spamassassin to reject spam
> tagged at level N at just send it back to them?

You can't.

SA is not designed to delete, deliver or bounce mail. It is designed to
scan and identify SPAM only. Any action taken (like delivering or
deleting) based on SA's judgment is another apps duty.

Besides, bouncing SPAM is not good practice. You'll often hit accounts
that are not in use at all or by innocent third party. Let your MTA or
MUA move them to a dedicated SPAM box or simply delete them, if you are
really sure not to get false positives.

...guenther


-- 
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main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}