25 July 2005

 

Filtering spam in Novell Evolution

When I switched to Novell Evolution, finding an anti-spam solution became a top priority. Having warmed to Evolution after noticing that its interface was no longer an imitation of Microsoft Outlook, I quickly learned to appreciate its centralized mail and business tools. Spoiled by Mozilla Thunderbird's built-in spam detection, I wanted some equivalent in Evolution.

Evolution's filtering tools for handling incoming messages provide the raw material for spam detection. However, the filters have difficulty knowing which characteristics of incoming mail should be treated as signs of spam. Information I gleaned from the Internet was only moderately useful; most of it was incomplete, obsolete, or inaccurate.
To find a solution, I pored over the headers of messages that Mozilla Thunderbird had detected as spam. From this research, I isolated the most common characteristics of spam and built several filters without leaving Evolution. Wanting to further improve spam detection, I spent several evenings testing various instructions for linking Evolution with SpamAssassin through a filter until I found one that worked. Taken together, these filters provided all the spam filtering I needed to remove my last obstacle to using Evolution.

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