[ale] Filtering spam on self hosted mail servers

[Ben Coleman]

On 11/3/2014 14:59, Ted W. wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I just received the first piece of spam to this mailing domain and was
> curious to find out what other users here have found that works well for
> filtering this junk out.

I've got a handful of countries that I block using the DNSBL country
lists provided by http://noc.bit.nl/dnsbl/ascc/, plus the virbl block
(see http://noc.bit.nl/dnsbl/ascc/), plus SpamCop (and I just started
using Spamhaus's Zen block list, mostly because certain snowshoeing
spammers have been making it through lately, and I'm hoping the CSS part
of their block list might mitigate that - we'll see how that goes), and
a rather old local block list of my own.  Anything that gets past the
block lists gets thrown at SpamAssassin.  What gets past SpamAssassin, I
let the junk filters in Thunderbird handle.

That said, I've noticed that spam volume appears to be down
considerably, compared to a few years ago.  I just checked the logs from
2010, when a typical day might have 4000 attempts blocked by the DLSBLs
I use.  SpamAssassin would catch 250-300 a day.  Nowadays, a typical day
might see 60 DNSBL blocks a day, and SpamAssassin takes out about
30-50/day.  And that's with not much change over the years as to how
much spam makes it to my eyeballs.

Not sure how much Thunderbird caught 4 years ago, but now it's about
20-30 a day.  Aside from this one showshoeing spammer over the past few
days, not much spam makes it through.

Ben
-- 
Ben Coleman oloryn at benshome.net | For the wise man, doing right trumps
http://oloryn.benshome.net/     | looking right.  For the fool, looking
Amateur Radio NJ8J              | right trumps doing right.

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