[NTLUG:Discuss] Mozilla spam filtering.

[Tom Hoover]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 01:36:04AM -0500, Steve Baker wrote:
> What I'd like to do would be to transfer the 'learned' controls from
> my user account to his...so as my copy of Mozilla learns, the
> necessary information gets passed to my son's account.  That way, my
> 'judgement' as to what I don't want to read will automatically become
> the criteria for discarding junk on my son's account too.
> 
> Does anyone know whether there is a file that holds that 'learned'
> data that I could maybe copy across to his account using a cron job or
> something?

If you're unable to find the correct file (or, if it turns out to be
impossible to do what you want with Mozilla), check out
spamprobe.sf.net.  Spamprobe is a standalone SPAM system, which uses the
same bayesian filtering that Mozilla does.  I've been using it for about
a year, and it catches 99% of all SPAM, with no false positives.  It
will allow you to easily use your "learned" data with your son's
incoming email.

The other thing that I do (to ensure that I catch that other 1%) is to
use procmail filtering to "bounce" all email coming to either of my
sons, from an "unknown" email address, to me first.  If it's from one of
their friends, etc, I then add a procmailrule to allow future mail from
that email address through.  Since they only receive legitimate email
from a couple of dozen people, this was not a big project to accomplish.
It also ensures that _no_ SPAM can ever reach their inbox (unless the
spammer knew the email address of one of their friends, and purposely
used that as the "From" address...in that case, spamprobe should catch
it).