Christopher Albert

christopher dot albert at mcgill dot ca

Hal Burgiss

hal at foobox dot net

2003-06-07 0.9 2002-06-07 HB first draft, a mere beginning This is just the beginning of a draft of the future Anti-Spam HOWTO. Stay tuned. Since this is a mere draft, there are most likely missing sections, errors, and other snafus. Please forgive the mess, and check back later. This HOWTO will address the impact of SPAM on computer users and networks, both large and small. We will look at the problem, as well as the various solutions that are available to Linux administrators and users. Spam is a four letter word to all of us. For the sake of our discussion, Spam will simply be unwanted email that is targeted at a large number of recipients. Often it is commercial in nature (i.e. trying to sell you something), but not always. We will not address mass mailings that are the result of viruses, though the techniques used to combat spam are often effective with viruses as well. And we will confine our discussion to email Spam only. There is a brief Glossary in the appendix should any of the terminology used in the document not be clear. This document, &doctitle;, is copyrighted © 2003 by Chris Albert and Hal Burgiss. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and information at your own risk. There may be errors and inaccuracies, that could be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely, the author(s) do not take any responsibility. All copyrights are held by their by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements. Feedback is always welcomed. To send your additions, comments and criticisms you can subscribe to the following list : Anti-Spam-Howto (at) lists.mcgill.ca. Anyone can subscribe to this list, but you must be subscribed to post and get messages. To subscribe, first read the information for list users at http://www.mcgill.ca/ncs/email/listserv/users/. Then send a message toLISTSERV (at) LISTS.MCGILL.CA with an empty subject line , and body without signature containing only the following line: SUB ANTI-SPAM-HOWTO firstname lastname This is a work-in-progress and not ready for prime time. New versions of this document will be periodically released through the The Linux Documentation Project. Since this document is aimed at a wide audience, we make the following recommendations on reading paths depending on your experience with linux and open source software, as well as your needs or responibilities for controlling spam. If you are looking for answers to general questions about spam, or some non-technical recommendations on how to reduce the amount of spam you, your group, or your organization receives you might want to look at our FAQ. If you are new or unexperienced with linux or opensource software you should consult our Getting Started Guide. If you are a reasonably expreienced linux user familiar with installing and configuring open source software, and want to set up a local anti-spam solution, you can start at Local Filtering, which deals with technolgies for filtering your mail locally. If you are an experienced mail administrator and want to implement a site-wide anti-spam solution for your group or organization, then the place for you to begin is the following section Site-Wide Filtering, which describes how to set up an spam-filtering solution on a mail gateway. If you are interested in an overview of current anti-spam technology, or want to do some reading and research before implementing a spam-filtering solution you can start reading from section Anti-Spam Technology, which gives an overview of spam filtering methods. If you think that spam is a larger problem better dealt with at the level of network protocols, or are interested in this prespective, then you might be intested to start reading at the section entitiled Network Protocols, which talks about some current research into dealing with spam at the level of network protocols. &technology; &lfiltering; &sfiltering; &protocols; &references; &glossary; &newbie; &faq;