Re: [Exim] 4.30-6.amwoody.1 + spamassassin problem

--

On Mar 15, 2004, at 08:12, Andy Firman wrote:

> Since I think everything is setup right, the only thing I am
> unsure about is the order of the routers.
> In the /etc/exim4/conf.d/router directory, do I need to make
> a change in the spamcheck_router filename?

Sorry, I did not analyze your router in detail yet, however I want to
give you one opinion first.

Don't run SpamAssassin in a router. Run it in an ACL (via Exiscan-ACL)
or in a local_scan function (using e.g. SA-Exim).

The reason is:
- Your config example uses 'return_fail_output'. Usually, this means
that an innocent third party whose e-mail address has been forged
receives notification about "their" message being rejected as spam.
This is just another form of spam, originating from you in this case.

- If you _don't_ return anything, simply deliver spam into a black
hole (or a mailbox that is never checked), then _legitimate_ mail that
is classified as spam will never come to the attention of either the
sender or the recipient.


My religious belief is that the ONLY correct ways to filter mail are:
- to use a filtering system that guarantees zero false positives
(i.e. not SA), or
- to manually look through all mail classified as spam (in essence,
defeating the purpose of spam filters in the first place), or
- to accept or reject it at SMTP transaction time.

Therefore, I strongly recommend Exiscan-ACL (or if you wish, SA-Exim).
The included 'exisan-acl-spec' and 'exiscan-acl-examples' documents are
easy to read through and contain good examples for use.

If your users want all their mails, I would simply add X-Spam-* headers
to their message and let them control their own filters. (Maybe use a
default filter which filters junk into a separate folder).

Let me know if you want me so send you config snippets for Exim and
SpamAssassin, and sample (Sieve) filters for mail sorting.

-tor
--
[ smime.p7s of type application/pkcs7-signature deleted ]
--