spam assassin

So my sister was telling me about a scene at their dinner table last night. Apparently 5-year-old Annie was pumping her arms in the air yelling, "GO LEAFS GO! GO LEAFS GO!" then added, after a pause, that her favourite player was Cujo. Funny thing is, my niece has never seen a hockey game before. :-)

I thought this was pretty amusing, but then realized that Annie's not much different from her uncle and aunt.

Jeff and I, the bandwagon-jumpers that we are, only watched the last ten minutes of the Toronto vs Ottawa hockey game last night. Within a few seconds of the Leafs winning, we muted the sound and opened the windows; sure enough, the car honking and cheering had begun, quadrupling in volume as hockey fans began emerging (like ants from so many anthills) from the many sports bars in our area.

Neither Jeff nor I are big sports fans, at least in terms of watching it on a regular basis. Jeff did used to watch some golf on television, which baffled me. Golf looks like such a dull sport already (and this is my cue to duck as all the lurking golf fanatics out there go berserk with rage); the idea of watching it on a tv screen has about as much appeal to me as having my teeth drilled without anaesthetic or being forced to watch re-runs of Temptation Island (which would be worse).

On the other hand, it's hard to ignore the overwhelming enthusiasm of the Toronto fans. They poured into Yonge Street last night, celebrating the Leafs' win. According to Canoe, the crowd's size was similar to that when the Jays won the World Series in the early 1990s. About 70 extra police officers were called in to barricade connecting streets to allow fans to walk safely along Yonge.





Many, many thanks to Bryan Fullerton for installing Spam Assassin on his server. Since I began filtering using Spam Assassin's flags, I've hardly had any spam in my in-box. Here's a sample excerpt of Spam Assassin's header output while scoring an incoming e-mail for spam content/format:


X-Spam-Status: Yes, hits=19.8 required=5.0 tests=TO_EMPTY,FROM_ENDS_IN_NUMS,
NO_REAL_NAME,PLING,TO_MALFORMED,
EARN_PER_WEEK,NO_EXPERIENCE,EXCUSE_3,
REMOVE_SUBJ,EXCUSE_1,EXCUSE_7,
LINES_OF_YELLING, LINES_OF_YELLING_2,
RCVD_IN_ORBS,RCVD_IN_RFCI
version=2.20 X-Spam-Flag: YES
X-Spam-Level: *******************
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.20
(devel $Id: SpamAssassin.pm,v 1.77
2002/04/06 1
9:28:30 hughescr Exp $)
X-Spam-Report: 19.8 hits, 5 required;
* 2.5 -- To: is empty
* 1.0 -- From: ends in numbers
* 0.6 -- From: does not include a real name
* 0.5 -- Subject has an exclamation mark
* 0.3 -- To: has a malformed address
* 4.7 -- BODY: Contains 'earn $something per week'
* -1.1 -- BODY: No experience needed!
* 2.7 -- BODY: Claims you can be removed from the list
* 2.3 -- BODY: List removal information
* 2.3 -- BODY: Gives a lame excuse about why
you were sent this SPAM
* 1.4 -- BODY: Claims you can be removed from the list
* 0.5 -- BODY: A WHOLE LINE OF YELLING DETECTED
* 0.6 -- BODY: 2 WHOLE LINES OF YELLING DETECTED


I filter anything with the spam=YES code into a separate mailbox, and check this once a day to see if any "real" mail accidentally got filtered. So far, only a few mailing lists have gotten filtered, but no personal mail.

Woohoo! As most of you know already, I despise spam with a hatred that gnaws at my soul. It wastes time and resources. It's obnoxious. It's insulting. I've alternated between investing way too much energy into trying to rid it from my mailbox, and steadfastly ignoring it. This Spam Assassin software is the first solution that actually seems to work.

At least it works for now, until spammers figure out how to work around the "spam scoring rules" built into the software. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be a long, long time.





Here's a fun review of the recent "Spider-man" movie by James Lileks, for those interested.

Today's Blatherpics:

	Our friend Helen.
	Helen, Jeff and Craig in Serra restaurant last night.
	Craig.