Comment Not an advertisement... (Score 3, Interesting) 100
... but it'll sound like one: I recently converted from a rather involved anti-spam defense utilizing SpamAssassin with Razor, Pyzor, and several RBL checks. I spent a fair amount of time selecting RBLs that worked the best and tweaking SA test scores whenever I got false positive/negative messages. I even had all sorts of validity checks turned on in the MTA to block out badly formed messages and the like.
I replaced all those defenses with: DSPAM. And I'm seeing better results out of the box than I ever did with a multi-layered SA-based solution, even after a lot of time tweaking.
A quick anecdote: When I converted, I opened up a bunch of previously blocked spamtrap addresses, just to get some good training material for the filter. I've long since passed my initial training threshhold but haven't even bothered to block the spamtraps again because I never see the spam. At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging, I literally don't have a spam problem anymore, and DSPAM is entirely responsible for that.
Now, I'm not necessarily advocating that you give up all your custom defenses and switch to DSPAM. (I've turned off all my other filters, but I haven't removed them completely.) There's always a chance that an ingenious spammer will find a weakness in DSPAM setups, but I can testify to the fact that DSPAM is "scary good" as of right now. Training the filter is a simple matter of dropping misclassified messages (and there aren't many) into an IMAP folder.
If what you have is working for you, stick with it. But if you're looking for a low-maintenance, high accuracy filter, you should definitely give DSPAM a shot.
I replaced all those defenses with: DSPAM. And I'm seeing better results out of the box than I ever did with a multi-layered SA-based solution, even after a lot of time tweaking.
A quick anecdote: When I converted, I opened up a bunch of previously blocked spamtrap addresses, just to get some good training material for the filter. I've long since passed my initial training threshhold but haven't even bothered to block the spamtraps again because I never see the spam. At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging, I literally don't have a spam problem anymore, and DSPAM is entirely responsible for that.
Now, I'm not necessarily advocating that you give up all your custom defenses and switch to DSPAM. (I've turned off all my other filters, but I haven't removed them completely.) There's always a chance that an ingenious spammer will find a weakness in DSPAM setups, but I can testify to the fact that DSPAM is "scary good" as of right now. Training the filter is a simple matter of dropping misclassified messages (and there aren't many) into an IMAP folder.
If what you have is working for you, stick with it. But if you're looking for a low-maintenance, high accuracy filter, you should definitely give DSPAM a shot.
