Need help with spam stuff.

Need help with spam stuff.

[Xavier Maillard]

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Hello,

I am trying to write a small document onto the french Gnus user site
[1] about configuring Gnus to fight spam using Ted's work.

As I am not a real expert at this, I would expect your help ;)

What are according to your current settings the proper way to configure
Gnus for that ? What's the best approach to get, to have it working
perfectly ? What spam filter to use and how ?

I have my own ideas on the subject as I have configured mine, but I
need more feedbacks from other people to be as accurate as
possible. What did people use : hand writing or customize stuff ? Why
one way and not the other ?

Thanx for your help.

zeDek

P.S: people contributing will be listed as helpers for the article
except if it annoy or they explecitely refuse.

Footnotes: 
[1] http://gnusfr.org
-- 
http://www.gnusfr.org -- French Gnus user site

Anti-war disclaimer:
	"Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity"

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Re: Need help with spam stuff.

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, zedek@gnu-rox.org wrote:
> I am trying to write a small document onto the french Gnus user site
> [1] about configuring Gnus to fight spam using Ted's work.
> 
> As I am not a real expert at this, I would expect your help ;)

Feel free to ask questions, I'll answer as best I can.

> What are according to your current settings the proper way to
> configure Gnus for that ? What's the best approach to get, to have
> it working perfectly ? What spam filter to use and how ?

spam.el tries to avoid these decisions.  I have seen users who want
everything automatic, other users want only incoming mail splitting,
others want only marked spam/ham transfer at summary exit time.  Each
user seems to like something different for a spam filter, too (since
you can combine filters, the total number of possibilities is very
large).

In terms of "most popular" spam filter, SpamAssassin and Bogofilter
seem to be very popular.  Both are supported by spam.el, one by
spam-use-regex-headers (which is configured for SpamAssassin by
default) the other by spam-use-bogofilter.  I don't hear much about
ifile at all, but it was a very neat idea when I first heard of it.
SpamOracle is new and I don't know how many users need it.  Plenty of
people, especially on Win32, use spam-stat.el since it is
platform-independent.

> I have my own ideas on the subject as I have configured mine, but I
> need more feedbacks from other people to be as accurate as
> possible. What did people use : hand writing or customize stuff ?
> Why one way and not the other ?

The manual section about spam.el gives very few ELisp examples for
these two reasons: one, it's hard to give an example when people
almost certainly will want something different from everyone else for
filtering spam; two, Customize is much better as a common
customization interface.  Group and topic parameters are the other
configuration piece, and that's pretty simple as well if done through
the proper interface in Gnus (`G c').

I recommend Customize all the way, it's much harder to get it wrong.
I had at least one person say they prefer hand-written customization,
and that's fine with me as long as I don't get bug reports because
users misconfigured things.  

My personal spam-related settings as of now:

(setq
 spam-use-bbdb t
 spam-use-regex-headers t		; does X-Spam-Flag by default
 spam-use-blackholes (stringp (executable-find "dig"))
 spam-blackhole-good-server-regex "134.174" ;; my local subnet
 gnus-spam-newsgroup-contents '(("spam" gnus-group-spam-classification-spam))
 spam-mark-only-unseen-as-spam t
;; split incoming mail according to the following rules.
 nnmail-split-methods 'nnmail-split-fancy
 nnmail-split-fancy '(|
		      (: gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent)

                      ;; check SpamAssassin early
		      (: spam-split 'spam-use-regex-headers)

                      ;; many irrelevant intermediate rules omitted

		      (: spam-split)

		      ;; default mailbox
		      "mail"))

Ted

Re: Need help with spam stuff.

[Xavier Maillard]

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On 15 jui 2003, Ted Zlatanov told this:

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, zedek@gnu-rox.org wrote:
> >  I am trying to write a small document onto the french Gnus user
> >  site [1] about configuring Gnus to fight spam using Ted's work.
> >  
> >  As I am not a real expert at this, I would expect your help ;)
>  
>  Feel free to ask questions, I'll answer as best I can.

I was almost sure you would answer to that thread :) \o/
  
> >  What are according to your current settings the proper way to
> >  configure Gnus for that ? What's the best approach to get, to have
> >  it working perfectly ? What spam filter to use and how ?
>  
>  spam.el tries to avoid these decisions.  I have seen users who want
>  everything automatic, other users want only incoming mail splitting,
>  others want only marked spam/ham transfer at summary exit time.  Each
>  user seems to like something different for a spam filter, too (since
>  you can combine filters, the total number of possibilities is very
>  large).

This won't help to document the basis of the setting then ;)
  
>  In terms of "most popular" spam filter, SpamAssassin and Bogofilter
>  seem to be very popular.  Both are supported by spam.el, one by
>  spam-use-regex-headers (which is configured for SpamAssassin by

Is this related to the spamassassin header tags ?

[...]
  
> >  I have my own ideas on the subject as I have configured mine, but I
> >  need more feedbacks from other people to be as accurate as
> >  possible. What did people use : hand writing or customize stuff ?
> >  Why one way and not the other ?
>  
>  The manual section about spam.el gives very few ELisp examples for
>  these two reasons: one, it's hard to give an example when people
>  almost certainly will want something different from everyone else for
>  filtering spam; two, Customize is much better as a common
>  customization interface.  Group and topic parameters are the other
>  configuration piece, and that's pretty simple as well if done through
>  the proper interface in Gnus (`G c').

Agree with that even if I am one of this hand-writtend maniac :) The
more I advance in writing the howto, the harder it is for me to take
the good decision. Spam is something more difficult I have imagined.

>  
>  I recommend Customize all the way, it's much harder to get it wrong.

Sure but as I am totally n00b at this I won't recommend that or at
least won't give bad explanation on that. I have never used any
Customize things until now so ... :)

>  I had at least one person say they prefer hand-written customization,

You now have 2 :)

>  and that's fine with me as long as I don't get bug reports because
>  users misconfigured things.  

Agree.
  
>  My personal spam-related settings as of now:
>  
>  (setq spam-use-bbdb t spam-use-regex-headers t ; does X-Spam-Flag by
>  default spam-use-blackholes (stringp (executable-find "dig"))
>  spam-blackhole-good-server-regex "134.174" ;; my local subnet
>  gnus-spam-newsgroup-contents '(("spam"
>  gnus-group-spam-classification-spam)) spam-mark-only-unseen-as-spam t
>  ;; split incoming mail according to the following rules.
>  nnmail-split-methods 'nnmail-split-fancy nnmail-split-fancy '(| (:
>  gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent)
>  
>  ;; check SpamAssassin early
>  		      (: spam-split 'spam-use-regex-headers)
>  
>  ;; many irrelevant intermediate rules omitted
>  
>  		      (: spam-split)
>  
>  		      ;; default mailbox
>  		      "mail"))

Wow I may have missed some options. /me needs to read the documentation
one more time.
  
>  Ted

zeDek
-- 
http://www.gnusfr.org -- French Gnus user site

Anti-war disclaimer:
	"Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity"

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Re: Need help with spam stuff.

[Xavier Maillard]

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On 15 jui 2003, Ted Zlatanov spake thusly:

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, zedek@gnu-rox.org wrote:

[...]

  
>  My personal spam-related settings as of now:
>  
>  (setq spam-use-bbdb t spam-use-regex-headers t ; does X-Spam-Flag by
>  default spam-use-blackholes (stringp (executable-find "dig"))
>  spam-blackhole-good-server-regex "134.174" ;; my local subnet
>  gnus-spam-newsgroup-contents '(("spam"
>  gnus-group-spam-classification-spam)) spam-mark-only-unseen-as-spam t
>  ;; split incoming mail according to the following rules.
>  nnmail-split-methods 'nnmail-split-fancy nnmail-split-fancy '(| (:
>  gnus-registry-split-fancy-with-parent)
>  
>  ;; check SpamAssassin early
>  		      (: spam-split 'spam-use-regex-headers)

Hmmm, what is the list of the possible checkers here ?
  
>  ;; many irrelevant intermediate rules omitted
>  
>  		      (: spam-split)

Why do you call spam-split again ?
  
>  		      ;; default mailbox
>  		      "mail"))
>  
>  Ted

zeDek
-- 
http://www.gnusfr.org -- French Gnus user site

Anti-war disclaimer:
	"Bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity"

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Re: Need help with spam stuff.

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, zedek@gnu-rox.org wrote:
> On 15 jui 2003, Ted Zlatanov told this:
>>  In terms of "most popular" spam filter, SpamAssassin and
>>  Bogofilter seem to be very popular.  Both are supported by
>>  spam.el, one by spam-use-regex-headers (which is configured for
>>  SpamAssassin by
> 
> Is this related to the spamassassin header tags ?

Yes, by default spam-use-regex-headers matches the SpamAssassin
positive spam match headers.

>>  I recommend Customize all the way, it's much harder to get it
>>  wrong.
> 
> Sure but as I am totally n00b at this I won't recommend that or at
> least won't give bad explanation on that. I have never used any
> Customize things until now so ... :)

I'm not sure why you wouldn't recommend Customize, but you can see
some screenshots at http://lifelogs.com/spam and decide for yourself
if it's too hard to explain.

Ted

Re: Need help with spam stuff.

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, zedek@gnu-rox.org wrote:
> On 15 jui 2003, Ted Zlatanov spake thusly:
>>  ;; check SpamAssassin early
>>  		      (: spam-split 'spam-use-regex-headers)
> 
> Hmmm, what is the list of the possible checkers here ?
>   
>>  ;; many irrelevant intermediate rules omitted
>>  
>>  		      (: spam-split)
> 
> Why do you call spam-split again ?
>   
>>  		      ;; default mailbox
>>  		      "mail"))

The first spam-split invocation targets specifically the
spam-use-regex-headers check.  If that check is turned on, spam-split
will run it.  You can use any number of spam-use-* checks here; I use
regex-headers first for two reasons: so that spam sent to my mailing
lists gets caught and because the regex-headers check is fast.

The second call of spam-split will target all the enabled checks,
including spam-use-regex-headers for a second time.  Since it's a fast
check, that doesn't bother me.  The other checks I have, especially
the blackholes check, would be too slow when run twice.

This is in the manual as well, I think.

Ted