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NAME

       mailfilterex - Mailfilter configuration file examples

SYNOPSIS

       $HOME/.mailfilterrc examples

DESCRIPTION

       For  a  description  of  the  rcfile  format  and  its keywords see the
       mailfilterrc(5) man page or get a basic set of options from either  the
       INSTALL file or the doc/ directory of the Mailfilter distribution.

       This man page contains several configuration examples and real-life use
       cases for the Mailfilter program.

EXAMPLES

       If not stated otherwise, the following examples assume  you  are  using
       extended  Regular  Expressions, compared to Mailfilter’s default, basic
       type. General information on Regular Expressions can be  found  in  the
       regex(7) man page or in any good book on UNIX/POSIX. You could also use
       slightly modified examples from procmail(1) if it is available on  your
       system.

   Filtering Domains
       To  create a very restrictive set of filter rules at least two keywords
       should be used: ALLOW and DENY. DENY could match  all  messages  coming
       from an annoying public mail service, while ALLOW matches messages from
       a good friend who also uses this annoying public mailer.

              DENY = "^From:.*public-mail\.com"
              ALLOW = "^From:.*friend@public-mail\.com"

       These two lines are enough to block all but your friend’s  e-mail  from
       the public-mail.com domain.

   Case Sensivity
       In general case-sensivity is controlled by the REG_CASE keyword. Having
       Mailfilter treat expressions case-insensitive  is  almost  always  more
       efficient.

              REG_CASE = "no"
              DENY = "^Subject:.*win money"

       In this example Mailfilter would delete all messages with subject lines
       like ‘WIN MONEY’, ‘Win Money’ or any other  mix  of  capital  and  non-
       capital characters. REG_CASE makes filters ignore the case.

       A  more  complex  set  up  can  be  achieved  by additionally using the
       DENY_CASE keyword.

              DENY_CASE = "^Subject:.*BUSINESS"

       In this example only e-mails that  have  ‘BUSINESS’  in  their  subject
       match  the  filter, even though in general Mailfilter ignores the case.
       So in this example all messages with ‘business’ or ‘Business’ in  their
       subjects would not be affected by this filter.

       Such  an  option is very useful if you are not interested in commercial
       bulk mail that offers amazing business opportunities, but in  all  your
       business partners who contact you by e-mail.

   Defining Friends
       The  keyword ALLOW can be used to override any spam filters. Similar to
       the earlier example ALLOW defines a ‘friend’.

              ALLOW = "^Subject:.*mailfilter"

       Adding this rule to the rcfile would mean  all  messages  that  contain
       anything  about  Mailfilter  in  their  subject lines can pass the spam
       filters. But even friends tend to send large e-mails sometimes to share
       their  joy  about  the  latest  joke  that just made the round in their
       office. In such cases a limit can be defined that affects  particularly
       ‘friends’.

              MAXSIZE_ALLOW = 500000

       Setting MAXSIZE_ALLOW to 500000 means no message can be larger than 500
       kBytes. (Scanned ‘office-jokes’ are usually around that size.)

   Negative Message Filters
       In order to create a very restrictive spam protection it  can  be  more
       useful  sometimes  to  define  which  e-mails  should  not  be  deleted
       instantly and consequently get rid of messages that can not be  matched
       to  this  criterion  -  rather than vice versa. This can be achieved by
       using negation. The typical use case is looking  at  the  message  tags
       ‘To:’ or ‘Cc:’ of an e-mail.

              DENY <> "^(To|Cc):.*my-email@address\.com"

       Having  added  such a filter to your personal rule set keeps away a lot
       of spam that is not directly addressed to your  e-mail  account.  Since
       this  is  a  very  aggressive way of filtering, you are well advised to
       keep your ‘friends list’ up to date. Also note that the above  example,
       using  the  logical  OR  operator,  works  only  with  extended Regular
       Expressions.

   Scores
       Instead of setting up spam filters,  it  is  also  possible  to  define
       scores  which  can be accumulated until a certain threshold is reached.
       This is very useful to delete  advertisements  on  mailing  lists,  for
       instance.  Highscore marks the threshold:

              HIGHSCORE = 100
              SCORE +100 = "^Subject:.*viagra"
              SCORE +100 = "^Content-Type:.*html"
              SCORE -100 = "^(To|From):.*my_mailing_list"

       This simple example is useful to delete mails with a score greater than
       100, i.e. if someone sends an HTML mail to my_mailing_list, the message
       will  reach  score  0.   However,  should an HTML mail regarding Viagra
       reach the list, then the message will  classify  as  spam,  because  it
       reached an overall score of 100.

       The  MAXSIZE_SCORE  keyword can be used to add to the accumulated score
       for an e-mail.  The  following  will  cause  all  emails  not  directly
       addressed  to  the recipient and greater than 60000 bytes in size to be
       deleted (a useful way of rejecting many common MS  targeted  worms  and
       trojans which can clog up your inbox).

              HIGHSCORE = 100
              MAXSIZE_SCORE +50 = 60000
              SCORE +50 <> "^(To|Cc):.*my-email@address\.com"

       This  is  a  less  aggressive way of dealing with e-mail sizes than the
       using the MAXSIZE_DENY keyword.  Note that this example (by  using  the
       expression  (To|Cc):.*my-email@address\.com)  works  only with extended
       Regular Expressions.

   General Message Size Limits
       It is always a good idea to define a very general  size  limit  for  e-
       mails.  Mailfilter uses the keyword MAXSIZE_DENY for that purpose.

              MAXSIZE_DENY = 200000

       Setting  it  to 200 kBytes can save you a couple of hours, depending on
       how much mail you get everyday. Messages bigger than that  get  deleted
       on  the  server,  unless  they match any of the ALLOW rules. To achieve
       maximum  efficiency  it  makes  sense  to  use  both  MAXSIZE_DENY  and
       MAXSIZE_ALLOW.  No  one should block up your mail box, no ‘friends’, no
       others.

       A rule of thumb is to be twice as tolerant towards friends than you are
       towards anonymous people.

   Dealing with Duplicates
       Most  people want to download a message only once, even though it might
       have been sent to two or three of their accounts at the same time.  The
       simple line

              DEL_DUPLICATES = "yes"

       will  take  care  of  duplicates and makes sure that only one copy of a
       message has to be delivered.

   Normalisation of Message Subjects
       Every now and then some clever sales person comes up with the brilliant
       idea to wrap spam in funny little characters. If you get a message with
       a subject line similar to this one ‘,L.E-G,A.L;  ,C.A-B‘L‘E,  .B-O‘X‘’,
       then ordinary filters would fail to detect the junk.

              NORMAL = "yes"

       Adding  this  directive  to  the rcfile tells Mailfilter to ‘normalise’
       subject strings, i.e. leave in only the  alpha-numeric  characters  and
       delete  the  rest.  ‘,L.E-G,A.L; ,C.A-B‘L‘E, .B-O‘X‘’ would then become
       ‘LEGAL CABLE BOX’ which can easily be matched to a spam filter.

       Note that Mailfilter first tries to match the original subject  string,
       before it checks on the normalised one.

   Control Mechanism
       Since  Mailfilter  deletes  e-mails  remotely,  before  they have to be
       downloaded into the local machine, it is also important to know what is
       going  on  while the program is being executed. The least you should do
       is define a proper level of verbosity and a log file.

              LOGFILE = "$HOME/logs/mailfilter-‘date +"%h%y"’"
              VERBOSE = 3

       Level three is  the  default  verbosity  level.  Using  it,  Mailfilter
       reports  information  on deleted messages, run-time errors and dates to
       the screen and the log file.

       You can use ‘command’ to embedd shell skripts into your path names.  In
       the  above  example  it  is used to store log files separately for each
       month and year.

   Extended Regular Expressions
       For advanced applications, the basic Regular Expressions are  typically
       not  sufficient.  If  you  know  the  syntax  and usage of the extended
       expressions,  it  is  almost  always  a  good  idea  to  set   REG_TYPE
       accordingly.

              REG_TYPE = "extended"

       Extended expressions are more flexible, but also more sensitive towards
       syntax errors and the like.  Examples in this man page all use extended
       type.

NOTES

       If  you are new to Regular Expressions and new to Mailfilter, you might
       want to experiment a bit, before you  accidently  delete  messages  for
       real. For such cases Mailfilter provides two keywords. TEST can be used
       to only simulate the deletion of messages and SHOW_HEADERS  stores  all
       the e-mail headers that get examined by the program.

              TEST = "yes"
              SHOW_HEADERS = "$HOME/logs/mailfilter-headers.txt"

       Use  this setup if you are not yet comfortable with the concept of spam
       filtering. It may help to understand Regular Expressions better and how
       to use them.

SEE ALSO

       mailfilter(1), mailfilterrc(5), procmailrc(5), procmailex(5), regex(7)

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2000-2009 Andreas Bauer <baueran@gmail.com>

       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is
       NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR  A  PARTICULAR
       PURPOSE.