[Evolution] Spamassassin 2.50 ...

[Tony Earnshaw <tonni billy demon nl>]

... has been released, 15:50 CET, for those using SA.

For the record: My standard MUA is Evo 1.2.1, secondary is Horde Imp CVS
- both with uw-IMAP 2002b and Exim smtp 4.12. Yes, Linux/Gnome 1.4.

For the great unwashed, I've been using 2.50-CVS since Sept. last year
and with Bayes analysis since mid Jan. last. And it's absolutely
fantastic.

Mind you, my solution's an MTA solution, Exim 4.12 with SA-Exim built in
(actually a shared *.so library) to the Exim binary.

Although Sendmail, Postfix, Qmail and Procmail solutions are available
for the unwashed. There are even M$ Windows possibilities.

I have my e-post address everywhere, so spam and shitty MS executables
are increasing at an exponential rate. My reaction is British English
"two horns to the devil," US English "middle finger up."

I almost never get to read spam sent to me, nor receive MS viruses.
They're mostly refused with an smtp 550 at data time, but with a trigger
higher than the "define-as-spam points." Any spam or viruses that pass
the smtp trigger, Exim's own filter catches and files/writes to the mail
spool either for consenting adults or the sysadmin.

2.50 plusses over 2.43/2.44, according to Justin Mason - one of its
pappas:

- Bayesian filtering, using a Bayesian-style form of probability-
  analysis classification.  This uses an algorithm based on the one
  detailed in Paul Graham's 'A Plan For Spam' paper, along with aspects
  taken from Graham Robinson's work, and the chi-combining technique
  developed by the SpamBayes project.

- Auto-learning.  This trains the Bayesian filter automatically, based
  on the results from traditional SpamAssassin diagnosis.   It uses a
  set of heuristics and separate thresholds to ensure (as much as is
  possible) that it trains on guaranteed non-spam and spam. Old, unused
  tokens are automatically expired.

- much-improved rule set.  A whole new set of rules based on Message-Id
  analysis is now in place, which accurately detects forged headers from
  a wide range of spamware.   Many inaccurate rules have been dropped.
  HTML tests much improved, with a set to detect image-only spam.

- new default format for detected-spam messages; the message is
  encapsulated as a MIME part, with a preview and the spam report
  in the main part of the message.

- Score sets.  Based on whether you are using just SpamAssassin rules,
  adding network tests, and using a trained Bayesian database,
  SpamAssassin will use a set of scores appropriately to gain the
  maximum degree of accuracy.

- Italian, Polish, Spanish, French and German rule sets and
  translations.

- Much improved reliability with spamd.  The problems with signals
  have been cleared up thanks to a pipe-based child tracking system,
  and all spamd-hanging bugs reported have proved unreproducable.

- Unicode problems with Red Hat 8 and perl 5.8 fixed.   Works on Perl
  5.005, 5.6.x, and 5.8.x.

- Taint-safe.  SpamAssassin runs with perl's taint-checking enabled for
  better security.

- Razor 1 support is now officially deprecated.

- "spamc -c" was not working, fixed.  This fix required increasing the
  revision of the spamd protocol; only difference is that now more than
  one protocol header can appear in the reply from spamd.

Best,

Tony

-- 

Tony Earnshaw

When you rob a person of his illusions,
you are robbing him of his happiness


e-post:         tonni billy demon nl
www:            http://www.billy.demon.nl