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Installing Spam Be Gone! on Unix systems is quite easy. Simply download the version of the Spam Be Gone! binary for your system, gunzip it, and untar it.
1. Copy the Spam Be Gone! executable somewhere (say
/home/you/bin/ ).
2. Get your key registration message from
http://www.internz.com/SpamBeGone/
3. Run Spam Be Gone on the registration message (key_msg),
/home/you/bin/SpamBeGone -r < key_msg
to update your key. The message will be copied to stdout
along with a message saying a key was updated. Make a note
of the X-SBG-processed: header of the message if you will be
using sendmail, e.g.:
X-SBG-processed: b3c3-2ed8-bf5a-2dbd-7c9d-718b
4. Determine how your mail is delivered. Have a look in your
/etc/sendmail.cf file. Search for "Mlocal". If may look like:
Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMAw5:/|@qShP, S=10/30, R=20/40,
T=DNS/RFC822/X-Unix,
A=procmail -a $h -d $u
P=/usr/bin/procmail means that procmail is used to deliver your mail.
i.e. if procmail (or qmail) is used (goto Step 5).
Otherwise, sendmail is used (goto Step 6)
5. If your mail is delivered using procmail (or qmail) as your local
delivery agent (LDA), you create .procmailrc file that
looks like:
:0 fhw
| /home/you/bin/SpamBeGone -r
If procmail is your LDA, you can use the "Automatically update key"
option (-r), because Spam Be Gone! is only processing the message
once. *** Move onto Step 7 ***
6. If your mail is delivered using sendmail, you can pass the
message over to procmail, have it processed, and send it
back to yourself. If you know a better way, let us know!
Here's how you'd do it:
a) Set your .forward file to call procmail, e.g.:
| /usr/local/bin/procmail
b) Set your .procmailrc to call SpamBeGone on each
message, e.g.:
:0
* !^X-SBG-processed: b3c3-2ed8-bf5a-2dbd-7c9d-718b
| /home/you/bin/SpamBeGone | $SENDMAIL -oi you@email.address
The .procmailrc line containing X-SBG-processed: is
to tell procmail that the message has already been
processed by Spam Be Gone! If this line is not present
in the .procmailrc an infinite loop will result. The
downside to using procmail is that whenever your
Spam Be Gone! key is updated, you must edit this line
in .procmailrc to prevent the looping (and this is why
automatic key updating is off by default -- after the
key update, the X-SBG-processed: header output by Spam
Be Gone! will change, so procmail will process subsequent
messages infinitely). Why do we output the the key at
all in that line? If we output a constant header field
it would be easy for spammers to add that field to their
messages to bypass Spam Be Gone!.
7. Edit your .sbg-config file as necessary. In general the
keywords should be lowercase, and config identifiers
(like K+, K-, ADDRESSBOOK) are uppercase.
a) You should change/add positive and negative keywords.
Positive keywords are just as important as negative
keywords, because although spammers may try to avoid
the common negative keywords, they have no idea what
your interests (and thus your positive keywords) are.
b) You should set the location of your mailreader's
addressbook. If you don't have an addressbook you could
create a file (the default is .sbg-aliases) containing
email addresses of your friends.
c) You may wish to add more USER keywords (these indicate
that messages make reference to you or your friends
names directly).
8. Initially train Spam Be Gone! on around 20 messages with
a variety of priorities, e.g.:
/home/you/bin/SpamBeGone -t 5 < spammy.msg
/home/you/bin/SpamBeGone -t 1 < important.msg
If you have Tcl/Tk installed you might find it easier to use
the supplied teacher.tcl program, which lets you browse
your mail folders, viewing messages and training on them
if desired, e.g.:
wish -f teacher /home/you/bin/SpamBeGone
9. Sit back and see what priorities Spam Be Gone! predicts in
the X-Priority: header of your mail messages. You may
be able to configure your mailreader to sort incoming
mail messages based on their priority, or to automatically
send messages with very low priority to a junk folder.
10. You should only have to train Spam Be Gone! on messages that
you think it made a wrong prediction on. If the prediction
is acceptable, no training is required. For example, if
Spam Be Gone! assigns a high priority to a spam message,
train Spam Be Gone! so that next time a similar message
arrives it will make the right prediction. Similarly for
messages that Spam Be Gone mistakenly assigns a low priority
to. You might also want to review the message to see whether
it contains keywords (either positive or negative) that
could be added to your .sbg-config file (in this case you
you may not need to train on the message as well, run
/home/you/bin/SpamBeGone -s < msg
and see if the new prediction is better. If not, train on
the message as well, with
/home/you/bin/SpamBeGone -t
© 1997 Internz Software |