SpamAssassin 3.1.7 review

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SpamAssassin is a mail filter which attempts to identify spam using a variety of mechanisms including text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases.

License: Freeware
OS: Mac OS X
File size: 1390K
Developer: SpamAssassin Group
Price: $0.00
Updated: 10 Oct 2006
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SpamAssassin is a mail filter which attempts to identify spam using a variety of mechanisms including text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases.

Once identified, the mail can then be optionally tagged as spam for later filtering using the user's own mail user-agent application.

SpamAssassin uses a wide range of heuristic tests on mail headers and body text to identify "spam", also known as unsolicited commercial email.

SpamAssassin typically differentiates successfully between spam and non-spam in between 95% and 100% of cases, depending on what kind of mail you get and your training of its Bayesian filter.

Specifically, SpamAssassin has been shown to produce around 0.9% false negatives (spam that was missed) and around 0.1% false positives (ham incorrectly marked as spam). See the rules/STATISTICS*.txt files for more information.

Here are some key features of "SpamAssassin":
Wide-spectrum: SpamAssassin uses a wide variety of local and network tests to identify spam signatures. This makes it harder for spammers to identify one aspect which they can craft their messages to work around.
Free software: it is distributed under the same terms and conditions as other popular open-source software packages such as the Apache web server.
Easy to extend: Anti-spam tests and configuration are stored in plain text, making it easy to configure and add new rules.
Flexible: SpamAssassin encapsulates its logic in a well-designed, abstract API so it can be integrated anywhere in the email stream. The Mail::SpamAssassin classes can be used on a wide variety of email systems including procmail, sendmail, Postfix, qmail, and many others.
Easy Configuration: SpamAssassin requires very little configuration; you do not need to continually update it with details of your mail accounts, mailing list memberships, etc. Once classified, site and user-specific policies can then be applied against spam. Policies can be applied on both mail servers and later using the user's own mail user-agent application.

What's New:
bug 4952: set a default value for DEF_RULES_DIR, LOCAL_RULES_DIR, and LOCAL_STATE_DIR.  This allows third-party code which hasn't been updated to deal with LOCAL_STATE_DIR to still use updates.
bug 5065: implement DomainKeys whitelisting (whitelist_from_dk)
bug 5034: fix endless loop in Mail::SpamAssassin::Client, possible from bad input or network error
bug 4843: skip text/calendar parts when generating body text for processing
bug 5022: recognize Received header from a local command line call to sendmail
bug 5018: update RegistrarBoundaries with new list of 2TLDs
bug 4981: remove urirhssub support for regexp subrule from URIDNSBL plugin
bug 5049: handle comments and extra whitespace in sa-update config files. also, fix an error during channel name validation.
bug 5030: sa-update couldn't run GPG if the path to the binary had a space in it
bug 4737: when rewriting headers, strip out leading spaces to better allow filtering by some MUAs
bug 4848: fix Pyzor, DCC, and SpamCop plugins to properly have a configuration pointer for things like their 'dont_report_to_...' option
bug 4492: the parameters to bayes_ignore_header were treated case sensitively
license text changed in source files, in accordance with new ASF policy: http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html
a bunch of documentation updates and fixes.

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