spamassassin - extensible email filter used to identify spam
SpamAssassin is an intelligent email filter which uses a diverse range of tests to identify unsolicited bulk email, more commonly known as "spam". These tests are applied to email headers and content to classify email using advanced statistical methods. In addition, SpamAssassin has a modular architecture that allows other technologies to be quickly wielded against spam and is designed for easy integration into virtually any email system.
For ease of access, the SpamAssassin manual has been split up into several sections. If you're intending to read these straight through for the first time, the suggested order will tend to reduce the number of forward references.
Extensive additional documentation for SpamAssassin is available, primarily on the SpamAssassin web site and wiki.
You should be able to view SpamAssassin's documentation with your man(1)
program or perldoc(1).
spamassassin SpamAssassin overview (this section)
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf SpamAssassin configuration files
spamassassin-run "spamassassin" front-end filtering script
sa-learn train SpamAssassin's Bayesian classifier
spamc client for spamd (faster than spamassassin)
spamd spamassassin server (needed by spamc)
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AutoLearnThreshold
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Bayes
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::BodyEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Check
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DKIM
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DNSEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::FreeMail
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HTMLEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HTTPSMismatch
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Hashcash
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HeaderEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ImageInfo
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::MIMEEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::MIMEHeader
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Pyzor
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Razor2
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::RelayEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ReplaceTags
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SpamCop
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDNSBL
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDetail
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::VBounce
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::WLBLEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::WhiteListSubject
SpamAssassin web site: http://spamassassin.apache.org/
Wiki-based documentation: http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/
A users mailing list exists where other experienced users are often able to help and provide tips and advice. Subscription instructions are located on the SpamAssassin web site.
The SpamAssassin rule base, text templates, and rule description text are loaded from configuration files.
Default configuration data is loaded from the first existing directory in:
Site-specific configuration data is used to override any values which had already been set. This is loaded from the first existing directory in:
From those three directories, SpamAssassin will first read files ending in ".pre" in lexical order and then it will read files ending in ".cf" in lexical order (most files begin with two numbers to make the sorting order obvious).
In other words, it will read init.pre first, then 10_default_prefs.cf before 50_scores.cf and 20_body_tests.cf before 20_head_tests.cf. Options in later files will override earlier files.
Individual user preferences are loaded from the location specified on
the spamassassin, sa-learn, or spamd command line (see respective
manual page for details). If the location is not specified,
~/.spamassassin/user_prefs is used if it exists. SpamAssassin will
create that file if it does not already exist, using
user_prefs.template as a template. That file will be looked for in:
The following two sections detail the default tagging and markup that
takes place for messages when running spamassassin or spamc with
spamd in the default configuration.
Note: before header modification and addition, all headers beginning
with X-Spam- are removed to prevent spammer mischief and also to
avoid potential problems caused by prior invocations of SpamAssassin.
By default, all messages with a calculated score of 5.0 or higher are tagged as spam.
If an incoming message is tagged as spam, instead of modifying the original message, SpamAssassin will create a new report message and attach the original message as a message/rfc822 MIME part (ensuring the original message is completely preserved and easier to recover).
The new report message inherits the following headers (if they are present) from the original spam message:
The above headers can be modified if the relevant rewrite_header
option is given (see Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf for more information).
By default these message headers are added to spam:
Set to YES.
The headers that added are fully configurable via the add_header
option (see Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf for more information).
The SpamAssassin report is added to top of the mail message body, if the message is marked as spam.
These headers are added to all messages, both spam and ham (non-spam).
The version and subversion of SpamAssassin and the host where SpamAssassin was run.
A series of "*" charactes where each one represents a full score point.
A string, (Yes|No), score=nn required=nn tests=xxx,xxx
autolearn=(ham|spam|no|unavailable|failed) is set in this header to
reflect the filter status. For the first word, "Yes" means spam and
"No" means ham (non-spam).
The headers that added are fully configurable via the add_header
option (see Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf for more information).
The spamassassin command is part of the Mail::SpamAssassin Perl module.
Install this as a normal Perl module, using perl -MCPAN -e shell, or by
hand.
Note that it is not possible to use the PERL5LIB environment variable
to affect where SpamAssassin finds its perl modules, due to limitations
imposed by perl's "taint" security checks.
For further details on how to install, please read the INSTALL file
from the SpamAssassin distribution.
Mail::SpamAssassin
Spam detector and markup engine
Mail::SpamAssassin::ArchiveIterator
find and process messages one at a time
Mail::SpamAssassin::AutoWhitelist
auto-whitelist handler for SpamAssassin
Mail::SpamAssassin::Bayes
determine spammishness using a Bayesian classifier
Mail::SpamAssassin::BayesStore
Bayesian Storage Module
Mail::SpamAssassin::BayesStore::SQL
SQL Bayesian Storage Module Implementation
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf::LDAP
load SpamAssassin scores from LDAP database
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf::Parser
parse SpamAssassin configuration
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf::SQL
load SpamAssassin scores from SQL database
Mail::SpamAssassin::Message
decode, render, and hold an RFC-2822 message
Mail::SpamAssassin::Message::Metadata
extract metadata from a message
Mail::SpamAssassin::Message::Node
decode, render, and make available MIME message parts
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgLearner
per-message status (spam or not-spam)
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgStatus
per-message status (spam or not-spam)
Mail::SpamAssassin::PersistentAddrList
persistent address list base class
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin
SpamAssassin plugin base class
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Hashcash
perform hashcash verification tests
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::RelayCountry
add message metadata indicating the country code of each relay
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF
perform SPF verification tests
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDNSBL
look up URLs against DNS blocklists
Mail::SpamAssassin::SQLBasedAddrList
SpamAssassin SQL Based Auto Whitelist
See <http://issues.apache.org/SpamAssassin/>
The SpamAssassin(tm) Project <http://spamassassin.apache.org/>
SpamAssassin is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, as
described in the file LICENSE included with the distribution.