Re: newbie spam filtering with gnus

[Enrico Schumann <es@enricoschumann.net>]

On Wed, 01 Apr 2015, Steven Arntson <steven@stevenarntson.com> writes:

> Several times in the last few months I've read through the Gnus manual
> about filtering out spam, and I always end overwhelmed. But I would like
> to accomplish something. I'm getting about 50 spam mails a day right now
> in my POP "nnml:mail.misc". They are all pretty "obvious" spam of the
> sort containing word salad under subject lines about discounted drugs
> and impossible enhancements. I've downloaded Spamassassin, but haven't
> been able to get my head around fancy splitting, connecting Gnus to
> Spamassassin, &c. And there appear to be many other options besides
> Spamassassin, which I am at a loss to evaluate.
>
> Is there any sort of simple "starter kit" for newcomers getting going on
> filtering out spam?
>
> Thank you for any advice aimed at a not-very-technical person!
> -steven
>

When I used POP some years ago, what worked out of the box for me was
using SpamAssassin as an external programme (spamc) during splitting, as
described in the manual:

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/SpamAssassin.html

To quote from the relevant section:

,----
| [A] solution is to call the external tools during splitting. Example
| fancy split method:
| 
|   (setq nnmail-split-fancy '(| (: kevin-spamassassin)
|                                ...))
| 
|   (defun kevin-spamassassin ()
|     (save-excursion
|       (save-restriction
|         (widen)
|         (if (eq 1 (call-process-region (point-min) (point-max)
|                                        "spamc" nil nil nil "-c"))
|             "spam"))))
`----



Kind regards,
     Enrico

-- 
Enrico Schumann
Lucerne, Switzerland
http://enricoschumann.net