NOTE: If your Entourage is set up as IMAP client the spam filtering is done on the server and you don't need to set up any rules. Follow the Entourage set up guide. You should still read this page as a reference though so you understand the implications of spam filtering! More on info about IMAP.
Email arriving
at Saturn is analyzed by Spam
Assassin software that assigns a score in points to each email message
and inserts that score into the invisible part of an email message called
the header. SpamAssassin analyzes an email message and looks for certain
message characteristics that suggest that the message may be spam
(junk). There are many criteria and each carries a point value. For example:
suspicious
FROM
address,
overuse
of colors and formatting, suspicious characters and words in the subject,
possible address forgery, etc. It is actually a lot more complex than
that, you can read more about it on SpamAssassin's web page, links are
provided at the bottom of this page. If a message earns a number, a sum
of of points,
above certain threshold SpamAssassin
labels
this email
message
as spam. Currently the minimum required for a message to be considered
spam is 5.0 points,
When a message is labeled as spam SpamAssassin also inserts an explicit line
in the header that says: "SpamAssassin says this is SPAM", and in addition it
inserts comments at the end of the message body containing detailed explanation
of the
score (Content
analysis details). You can see an example of email header with Spam Assassin
entries here and
an example of content analysis here.
SpamAssassin does not reject or delete email messages by itself. It only analyses
them
and labels (flags) possible spam. The comments inserted by SpamAssassin into email headers
can be used to trigger filters and rules in different email programs to remove
or even delete suspected spam messages.
UPDATE:
For users who check their email using IMAP we can now enable server-side filtering. This means that the email server will move those flagged emails to another folder called Garbage - this happens on the server, not on your computer. In such case there is no need to enable any filters on the user's computer. This method does require IMAP, as POP doesn't have the baility to access other folders on the server besides Inbox. We only support Entourage and Thunderbird with this, however, recent versions of Maill.app should be able to handle this well. Since Eudora implementation of IMAP doesn't work well, we don't support Eudora with IMAP.
However, SpamAssassin is not perfect! It's one of the best anti-spam solutions
but
it
may
sometimes
label
legitimate
email as spam (false positive). For instance, you may be getting commercial mailings
that you have willingly subscribed to or emails from a friend who likes to use
flashy formatting or it may be a greeting card and all of these may have certain
characteristics
of spam.
Therefore,
it's
not
safe
to
instantly
and
permanently
delete
all messages flagged by SpamAssassin. That's why we're not doing this
on the server, we can't delete any of these email automatically as it'd be risky:(
SpamAssassin may sometimes miss a junk message
too, so you may occasionally see some spam slip through, but it's really rare.
So what's the advantage of running SpamAssassin on Saturn if we can't delete
these messages and they end up in your Inbox anyway? Most
email
programs
allow
you
to
create
rules
or
filters
and
move
messages
to
a different folder based on some given criteria. In the case of mail analyzed
by SpamAssassin the criteria would be that sentence in the header: "SpamAssassin
says
this is SPAM".
So
the
recommended
course
of
action
is
to
have
Eudora
or
Entourage
move the suspected spam out of your Inbox to another folder, usually called "junk"
or "spam". Then you'd periodically look into that folder, check for
any
false
positives
and
manually
delete
spam. It's not the best solution, but at least the ugly stuff is out of your
inbox and out of your sight and you won't get nasty surprises when routinely
checking
your
email. We will cover Entourage, Eudora and perhaps Thunderbird. See the links
below.
You can learn more about SpamAssassin if you're curious:
- SpamAssassin Frequently Asked Questions
- How SpamAssassin assigns the scores
- SpamAssassin documentation
- Instructions for Microsoft Entourage
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