NACS > Email > Spam > Procmail

Setting Up SpamAssassin Recipes for Procmail

Summary: Procmail allows you to filter out messages on the server. Below you will find recipes to filter out spam using SpamAssassin's information.

Introduction
Procmail Recipes
Warnings
Procmail Info

Introduction

The UCI mail system now scans incoming email for potential spam. We use SpamAssassin to scan individual email and award a point value based on the amount of potential spam. The point value is included within the X-header added to the email.

You can create a Procmail recipe to examine the X-headers in order to filter spam. SpamAssassin is configured to mark any email at 5 or more points as spam.

Since Outlook Express and UCI Webmail users cannot filter on X-headers, you can use Procmail and these recipes to filter out spam on the server.

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Procmail recipes for spam

Recipe #1: Filtering spam to another folder.
The following recipe will filter spam into a folder called, "spam".
It is highly recommended you start out with this recipe as SpamAssassin may tag something as spam that you want.

# BEGIN-------copy here-------copy here-------BEGIN #

:0 H:
* ^(X-UCIRVINE-SpamCheck:)
spam

#END-------copy here-------copy here-------END#

Recipe #2: Filtering spam to another folder.
The following recipe will filter spam into a folder called, "spam".

You can vary the amount of spam protection that you want in this recipe by varying the number of "s" that you have in the filter. SpamAssassin marks messages with one to five "s". One "s" (X-UCIRVINE-SpamScore: s) will block most spam, but may mark some legitimate messages as spam. Five "s" (X-UCIRVINE-SpamScore: sssss) will mark less messages as spam, but will allow most, if not all legitimate messages through.

It is highly recommended you start out with this recipe as SpamAssassin may tag something as spam that you want.

# BEGIN-------copy here-------copy here-------BEGIN #

:0 H:
* ^(X-UCIRVINE-SpamScore: sssss)
spam

#END-------copy here-------copy here-------END#

Recipe #3: Automatically delete spam
The following recipe will delete spam before it gets to your inbox.

Use this method with caution. This method will keep your inbox limit at manageable levels, but you will not know what is being marked as spam.

# BEGIN-------copy here-------copy here-------BEGIN #

:0 H:
* ^(X-UCIRVINE-SpamCheck:)
/dev/null

#END-------copy here-------copy here-------END#

Recipe #4: Automatically delete spam
The following recipe will delete spam before it gets to your inbox.

Use this method with caution. This method will keep your inbox limit at manageable levels, but you will not know what is being marked as spam.

# BEGIN-------copy here-------copy here-------BEGIN #

:0 H:
* ^(X-UCIRVINE-SpamScore: sssss)
/dev/null

#END-------copy here-------copy here-------END#

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When spam is not spam

SpamAssassin marks what it thinks is spam based on its rule set. You may find that some mail you do want is being marked as spam. If you filter it to another folder, you won't lose these messages.

If SpamAssassin marks something as spam that you do want, you can create a new recipe to filter these messages out before SpamAssassin works. For example, a common problem are e-vites being marked as spam. Below you will find recipes to mark specific types of messages to not be marked as spam.

E-vite example
The following recipe will put e-vites into your inbox. This recipe needs to precede that of the SpamAssassin recipe so that it will work. Make sure you put in your own UCInetID:

# BEGIN-------copy here-------copy here-------BEGIN #

:0:
* ^Received:.*evtmx
/var/mail/UCINetID

#END-------copy here-------copy here-------END#

Note: The recipe works by checking to see if the message is coming from the e-vite servers. It will then put it into your mail folder before it runs the SpamAssassin recipe.

More Procmail recipes

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