Hello natalieemt,
Thank you for your question
Spam Assassin is a server side program to tag potential Spam email and
make it easier to delete in bulk. I use it with great success on one
of my personal email accounts that runs on a Unix server. I have not
heard of a version that runs in Windows on your local machine, and if
I am in error and have missed an advance in this program, please
request clarification and I will search further.
But, for the moment I will assume that this is what you are using and
as this page notes:
Computing Research Laboratory:
http://crl.cs.uiuc.edu/doc/Mail/spamassassin.html
"What is SpamAssassin?
SpamAssassin is an email filtering tool that attempts to identify spam
using text analysis and several Internet-based real-time blacklists.
Users may see a marked decrease in unwanted and unsolicited email by
utilizing SpamAssassin.
SpamAssassin runs on UNIX machines. The first thing SpamAssassin does
is to add *****SPAM***** to the “Subject” line of the message. It
then inserts tags into the message header that enables email programs
to identify and filter according to your preferences. SpamAssassin
does NOT automatically delete tagged messages; it simply scans, tags
and passes them along to your mailbox. Attachments are not scannable
by SpamAssassin and are not affected in any way
Most email programs have built-in methods of filtering (or sorting)
your incoming mail but you must set up the filters you want to use.
The filters you add to your email program ultimately decide what
happens next. A spam filter can be used to either delete unwanted
messages or they can be sorted and stored in a special SPAM mailbox
(or folder) in your email program. You can then review spam-tagged
email and delete them once you are satisfied that none are legitimate
messages that you might want to keep. There is no easy way to insure
that a legitimate email will not become mistakenly tagged as spam
since mail content may include suspect words or phrases that are
actually innocent in nature. You should periodically clean out the
special SPAM folder or you may quickly exceed your disk quota on your
mailbox..."
They continue a little later on to discuss Whitelists and Blacklists,
which is what you need to configure to allow the newsletters you
desire to pass without being marked as Spam:
" Whitelists and Blacklists:
You can define a whitelist which is a list of domains and/or addresses
from which email will NEVER be tagged as spam. This is done with the
whitelist_from directive. A blacklist is a list of domain and/or
addresses from which email will ALWAYS be tagged as spam. This is done
with the blacklist_from directive. You can have as many of either of
these directives as you want, one per line. File glob-style patterns
are supported. Blank lines and lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
Below is an example of the user_prefs file.
# Whitelist and blacklist addresses are now file-glob-style
# patterns, so "friend@somewhere.com", "*@isp.com", or
# "*.domain.net" will all work.
# whitelist_from someone@somewhere.com
whitelist_from *uiuc.edu
whitelist_from *uillinois.edu
whitelist_from *@friends.com
whitelist_from meghan@colleagues.com
blacklist_from *@spamhut.com
blacklist_from *@massmarketing.com"
Broadband Reports, which is an excellent source for information on
most anything dealing with online connectivity, has this to say:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/faq/mail/8.+Spam+Assassin
"...
Q: What is 'white list'? (#6053)
A: Think of a "white list" as a list of good guys, whose email you
want to set to always receive.
You should whitelist the e-mail addresses of well-known legitimate
senders to avoid the chance of them being mis-identified by the
SpamAssassin default rules.
For example:
whitelist_from director_8345@hotmail.com # whitelist one specific
sender
whitelist_from @securityfocus.com # whitelist an entire
domain
Q: Working with white/black lists (#6125)
A: It's to your benefit to add to both your white list and black
list, based upon your experience with the email you receive.
For example, SpamAssassin might mark a newsletter that you receive as
spam, so if you want to continue to receive that newsletter, just add
the "From" address of that newsletter to your whitelist box...
...Q: What is 'black list'? (#6054)
A: The opposite of a "white list", a "black list" is obviously a
place to include those specific email addresses you want to omit, or
mark as spam.
The format would be:
somebody@someISP.com or,
somebody (such as, "joespammer")
This would apply to that user name at any domain.
You can also use wildcards in your blacklist entries, for those
spammers who include random numbers in their alleged email addresses:
somebody000@spammer.net would become somebody*@spammer.net
..."
Now, in my case, my provider has provided a web page where I can login
to my account and easily add or remove entries to my White and Black
Lists. I can also log in using Telnet into my shell account to make
changes in my preferences file in pure ASCII. You will have to check
with your provider, if you are not already aware, to find how to
access your preferences.
One provider using Unix has the following instructions for their
users, for example:
Southern Web Hosting
http://www.southernweb.net/portal/forums/showthread.php?s=1fb4ca1206498478b90c06b8dc34c433&postid=9#post9
"Spam Assassin User Configuration
In your root directory there is a directory called .spamassassin which
contains the following file:
user_prefs
By using the following information you can personalize and tweak your
personal settings in this file...
...DESCRIPTION
SpamAssassin is configured using some traditional UNIX-style
configuration files, loaded from the
/usr/share/spamassassin and /etc/mail/spamassassin directories.
The "#" character starts a comment, which continues until end of line,
and whitespace in the files is not significant.
Paths can use "~" to refer to the user's home directory.
Where appropriate, default values are listed in parentheses.
USER PREFERENCES
whitelist_from add@ress.com
Used to specify addresses which send mail that is often tagged
(incorrectly) as spam; it also helps if they
are addresses of big companies with lots of lawyers. This way, if
spammers impersonate them, they'll get
into big trouble, so it doesn't provide a shortcut around
SpamAssassin.
Whitelist and blacklist addresses are now file-glob-style patterns, so
"friend@somewhere.com", "*@isp.com",
or "*.domain.net" will all work. Regular expressions are not used for
security reasons.
Multiple addresses per line is OK. Multiple "whitelist_from" lines is
also OK.
blacklist_from add@ress.com
Used to specify addresses which send mail that is often tagged
(incorrectly) as non-spam, but which the
user doesn't want. Same format as "whitelist_from".
whitelist_to add@ress.com
If the given address appears in the "To:" or "Cc:" headers, mail will
be whitelisted. Useful if you're
deploying SpamAssassin system-wide, and don't want some users to have
their mail filtered. Same format as
"whitelist_from"..."
So, in short, discover how to access your user prefs file from your
provider and add to your white and black lists to make Spam Assassin
even more useful for you.
As to your second question, simply click the Spam Folder you have
created to display all of the email in that folder. Left click any
single message in the right pane once, then hit CTRL-A to select ALL
messages. Now hit the DELETE key and they are all gone.
I always recommend checking through the messages in the SPAM folder
just to be sure nothing has snuck through as a false positive and it
is not something you will regret deleting.
Search Strategy:
"spam assassin" +whitelist
I trust my research has provided the answers you desired. If a link
above should fail to work or anything require further explanation or
research, please do post a Request for Clarification prior to rating
the answer and closing the question and I will be pleased to assist
further.
Regards,
-=clouseau=- |
