Spam
Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:50 pm
Spam spam spam spam spam spam.. Ok enough for the monty python reset.
How do you fight spam? I'd be interested in hearing other people's solutions at home or at their IT dept/company.
Here are some personal experiances:
Virginia Tech:
I'm somehow affiliated with VT and work in some form as an IT manager. Virginia Tech, and colleges in general are about as diverse a group as you can get into one place to work together. Everything from education to research to real business to just living there happens at a school. Every possible form of technology is used in one form or another. Virginia Tech can honestly say that when it comes to technology they are indeed at the front in every sense of the world. Internet2, state wide educational network, town internet projects, wireless network research and of course the 3rd fastest rated computer system in the world (and fastest in the educational word).
So how does VT deal with Spam? Far from simple. First of all, VT runs two simultanious email services side by side. One is a large MS Exchange service which not only supports email, as well as some major office integration stuff. I don't use it. Then there is their huge Solaris machine which manages over 100,000 email boxes for university students, faculty, staff, visitors, grunts and geeks.
The email server is a purchased solution but from what i've heard, they use a derivative of SpamAssassin (modified of course) or a similar product to catch spam. They do not automatically delete your email. Instead they just put in two headers that label the email and score the email as spam. Then it is your job to set up filters to move spam from your folder or to delete it.
In case you wanted to set up a spam filter for your network, spamassassin is a great tool to use. Its by the Apache project group.
http://spamassassin.apache.org/ - unix/linux solution.
I personally have used some other tools as well.
spampal was perhaps one of the best experiances I had until VT implemented an SSL connection to its POP email server (a great move btw), except that most free spam solutions don't support it by default, but you can use an SSL wrapper like Stunnel. Spampal and other similar spam solutions will act as an intermediary between your email client and the server so they work with any email client and pop3 server.
http://www.spampal.org
An alternative if you use MS Outlook is to use something like spambayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/windows.html) for MS Outlook. This is a plugin and so it searches for spam after outlook downloads the email. It doesn't work wout outlook express though.
There are many solutions. Anything you look at should have a few features such as:
Bayesian filter
spam server list integration (searches known servers that spam a lot)
black and white lists (allows you to set automatic spam or clean emails/filters)
-ET
How do you fight spam? I'd be interested in hearing other people's solutions at home or at their IT dept/company.
Here are some personal experiances:
Virginia Tech:
I'm somehow affiliated with VT and work in some form as an IT manager. Virginia Tech, and colleges in general are about as diverse a group as you can get into one place to work together. Everything from education to research to real business to just living there happens at a school. Every possible form of technology is used in one form or another. Virginia Tech can honestly say that when it comes to technology they are indeed at the front in every sense of the world. Internet2, state wide educational network, town internet projects, wireless network research and of course the 3rd fastest rated computer system in the world (and fastest in the educational word).
So how does VT deal with Spam? Far from simple. First of all, VT runs two simultanious email services side by side. One is a large MS Exchange service which not only supports email, as well as some major office integration stuff. I don't use it. Then there is their huge Solaris machine which manages over 100,000 email boxes for university students, faculty, staff, visitors, grunts and geeks.
The email server is a purchased solution but from what i've heard, they use a derivative of SpamAssassin (modified of course) or a similar product to catch spam. They do not automatically delete your email. Instead they just put in two headers that label the email and score the email as spam. Then it is your job to set up filters to move spam from your folder or to delete it.
In case you wanted to set up a spam filter for your network, spamassassin is a great tool to use. Its by the Apache project group.
http://spamassassin.apache.org/ - unix/linux solution.
I personally have used some other tools as well.
spampal was perhaps one of the best experiances I had until VT implemented an SSL connection to its POP email server (a great move btw), except that most free spam solutions don't support it by default, but you can use an SSL wrapper like Stunnel. Spampal and other similar spam solutions will act as an intermediary between your email client and the server so they work with any email client and pop3 server.
http://www.spampal.org
An alternative if you use MS Outlook is to use something like spambayes (http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/windows.html) for MS Outlook. This is a plugin and so it searches for spam after outlook downloads the email. It doesn't work wout outlook express though.
There are many solutions. Anything you look at should have a few features such as:
Bayesian filter
spam server list integration (searches known servers that spam a lot)
black and white lists (allows you to set automatic spam or clean emails/filters)
-ET