SpamAssassin(tm) is a mail filter to identify spam.

SCI has a spam filter installed. However your mail will not be filtered, unless you setup your mail settings to do so.

If you would like your mail filtered, setup the following files. You will need to login to machine www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu. You MUST telnet or ssh to www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu to setup the appropriate files. You cannot login to the mail server, however you are able to login to the web server. These servers are outside the firewall and have different home directories than your internal SCI accounts. If you wish, you may setup links in your normal SCI account to files placed outside the firewall. Such as if you wish to have spam stored in a file on the server, you may wish to link to the spam file from your normal account.

SpamAssassin knows the various spam mail that is going around. Such as the get rich quick schemes, the pills to buy, and the other nonsense going on.

You can edit any file by doing:

pico filename
Such as:
pico .forward

Setup the following in your home directory:
.forward
Do the following commands:

cd
pico .forward

Create the following content in your .forward file:
You must include the line exactly as follows, the " # | etc. are needed. Do a copy & paste instead of typing the command by hand.

"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #YOUR_ID"

Replace YOUR_ID with your user ID. Such as if your name on SCI is smith. Then you'd have your .forward file contain:
"|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #smith"

To exit pico press Ctrl-X, then press Y to save.
You will also need to create a .procmailrc file in your home directory.
This file will call SpamAssassin.
PC Users should use the marking option. Use this option if you normally read your mail via a PC client such as Outlook. Most standard users of SCI will want to use this option.
Do the following:
cd
pico .procmailrc

Then copy and paste the .procmailrc text into your file. You can paste into telnet by right clicking and selecting paste.
Ctrl-X to exit, and press Y to save.

This will not delete any spam. All mail is delivered to your mailbox. Then on your mail client (such as Outlook), you will need to setup a filter to move all mail marked as spam to a new folder. Information on setting up filtering for Netscape & Outlook.

Only attempt the following if you are a UNIX power user and are comfortable reading your mail via UNIX and opening multiple mailbox files!
I have created another file if you would like your mail stored in an alternative mailbox. Spam will not be stored in your normal mailbox. It will be stored in an alternative mailbox and left on the server. Then it is up to you to login and read your spam mail via a UNIX mailer. This way is meant for UNIX "power" users.  Do not attempt if you do not read your mail usually on a UNIX machine. Download and save the filtering file to your home directory as .procmailrc
You will need to edit the location of where to store your spam. The file as supplied expects to store mail in a directory called spam in your home directory. Make sure this directory exists before you save your .procmailrc file.

You may wish to place a link to the spam directory or the files in the spam directory from your regular SCI account to your DMZ account. This way you can easily read your mail from your favorite SCI machine. Your home directory is in:
/net/dmzshare/export/home/YOUR_ID
Replace YOUR_ID with your own ID
So for example if you made a directory called spam, you may wish to login to your favorite SCI machine and go to your home directory and do the following:
ln -s /net/dmzshare/export/home/YOUR_ID/spam
This will create a symbolic link to your spam folder. To read your spam mail, use mail or mailx to open your messages (or your favorite reader) with the -f option.
So for example to use mail. You'd do:
mail -f spam/almost-certainly-spam
and
mail -f spam/probably-spam

If you use elm or pine to read your mail, you can most likely make symbolic links to the spam files in your mailboxes folder.

If you are already forwarding mail, you should place your forward address inside the .procmailrc at the end to forward filtered mail. If you want to forward all mail, place it at the beginning. Please read the instructions on setting up your forwarding information.


When you are done setting up your filter. You should test it by sending yourself a mail message using the full address as yourself@sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu, replacing yourself with your own id. In the body, include the following:
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-UBE-TEST-EMAIL*C.34X
If you set things up properly, this message will be marked as spam.

Test your filter. Make sure valid mail is delivered!

If you find that you are losing valid mail from people, you can add their addresses to a white list, to allow their mail to get through. You can do this on a particular email address, or on a domain name basis. In your home directory, after filtered mail is arrived, you will see a new directory called .spamassassin. You may open the file user_pref and edit the whitelist_from variable. So for example to allow all cuny.edu mail, you'd set:
whitelist_from  *cuny.edu

You can also adjust the rating to set what level should be marked as spam. In the user_pref file, set:
required_hits to be a higher number. The default is 5. The company says setting to 15 will have a 0.05% false positive. However still some non-spam is lost then. So try for a number between 5 and 15 and you'll get a comfortable result.

README file deals with how to customize the filtering rules.


You can have procmail delete all spam, but this is UNSAFE as there may be mail which is not spam but may be a false positive. I will not explain how to do this. If you do, do so at your own risk!