UCLA Math Consulting: Spam Filtering Method

UCLA Mathematics Consulting Group

SPAM Filtering Method: Detailed Instructions

General: Turning on SPAM Filtering
Summary: Setting up SPAM Filtering on UNIX
Main Menu
Advanced Menu
If you use Thunderbird

General: Turning on SPAM Filtering

Here is how to turn on spam filtering with Spam Assassin. Note, if you have your own .forward or .procmailrc files, activation will have to be done carefully and manually; in that case please send mail to bugs@math.ucla.edu or drop by the consulting office for help.

Log in to any Mathnet or Linux machine, e.g. Cedar, Walnut, Tupelo, Julia, or the various desktop UNIX machines.
On the command line, execute the command spamscript
After you agree to accept the risk that Spam Assassin may misclassify occasional wanted mail as spam, to keep an eye on your spam, and to look before deleting it, choose the script's menu option for setup.
The script will create for you a .procmailrc file which will execute Spam Assassin when each message is delivered. It will also set your user preferences for moderately aggressive filtering.
You will see no difference in your legitimate mail. Continue to follow your usual practices when reading mail.
Once or twice a week, you should dispose of accumulated spam. Open the spam mailbox (which is called spam), quickly review the senders and subject lines, and mark them all for deletion (except in the rare case that legitimate mail looks like spam). The procedure for selecting a different mailbox varies with the mail reader:

Pine
On the home screen select Folder List, and within that, select spam. To revert to your INBOX, navigate again to the Folder List and select INBOX there.
Qualcomm Eudora
If you are using the IMAP mail access protocol, the leftmost panel should show your mailbox(es), one of which should be labelled spam. Click on it. (We have not figured out how to download alternate mailboxes using POP in Eudora.)
Microsoft Outlook Express
Switching mailboxes is a little more complicated than in Eudora. The instructions are under construction.

Summary: Setting up SPAM Filtering on UNIX

1) Log into your UNIX account
2) type 'cd' to make sure you're in your home directory
3) type 'spamscript'

What will happen after that is that, after the "Welcome" message, you will be presented with a list of MENU items:

Main Menu

a) Learn about the SPAM Filtering Method
b) Read the DISCLAIMER
c) Instructions
d) SETUP
e) Advanced Menu
q) quit

Item a) and b) are a repeat of what is on this web site. Item c) is the Instructions in UNIX. Item d) is the one you're interested in. It will run the SETUP program, and install a file in your home directory which will do both the SPAM Tagging, and SPAM Filtering. Please note that if you have a '.forward' file (if you forward your mail), or if you have run the vacation program (or, will run it), the SETUP program will NOT work. You will need to contact BUGS (bugs@math.ucla.edu).

At any time during the execution of spamscript, you can Return to the Main Menu (which is the one above), or quit (by typing q).

Item d) (SETUP) is designed to configure your system for Spam Filtering initially. Once you have done this, you can just let Spam Filtering go to work for you, and you need to periodically check your mail/spam file (from your home directory), or the 'spam' folder (in the PINE program) to see if you have received SPAM.

Your next step is to either remove the SPAM messages yourself (in PINE), or view the mail/spam file in a text editor (like 'vi'), and then just delete the file mail/spam. When more spam comes in, it will re-create that folder.

Advanced Menu

Once you have run SETUP from the Main Menu, you can sit back and let Spam Assassin go to work, filtering the spam for you (which you *must* check in the 'spam' folder periodically). However, if you would like to 'fine tune' your spam settings, or evoke special features like blacklisting and whitelisting, you will need to select item e), the Advanced Menu. This is what the menu looks like:

a) Set SPAM Hit Level
b) Review Settings
c) Add to whitelist
d) Add to blacklist
e) Turn on/off SPAM Tagging
f) Turn on/off SPAM Filtering
g) Spam Filtering for Thunderbird
h) Return to Main Menu
q) quit

The 'SPAM Hit Level' (which you know about from reading the SPAM FAQ) can be set by selecting item a) of the Advanced menu. When you first run SETUP (from the Main Menu), the SPAM Hit Level is set to 5.0. You can change it to whatever you want.

For item b), you can select this if you want to Review your Settings. You can see if you have SPAM Tagging selected, SPAM Filtering selected (usually they are both selected, default), and see what your SPAM Hit Level is.

Items c) and d) are whitelists and blacklists, respectively. This is where you add items to the whitelist (i.e., email addresses of those that you want to never be considered sources of spam), and to the blacklist (i.e., email addresses of those that you want to always be considered sources of spam).

Items e) and f) are for advanced users only. We don't recommend using this, as a rule, but the option is available. If you use them without sufficient instruction on what they will do, you could either foul up your normal spam process, or eliminate it.

Item g) is considered an Advanced Menu item, because you will *really* need to have a good understanding of Thunderbird mail filtering, before you attempt to filter your mail this way. Otherwise, you could end up losing more mail than you expect.

If you use Thunderbird

If you use Thunderbird, you will *still* have to set up the SPAM Filtering through your UNIX account. You will then need to select Item g) from the Advanced Menu. After that, you can set up Spam Filtering on the Thunderbird side. To do that, go to the following site:

Setting up Filtering with Thunderbird

ra:03/31/04