New SpamAssassin Book Released by Packt
As a busy administrator, you know that Spam is a major distraction in todays network. The effects range from inappropriate content arriving in mailboxes, to contact email addresses placed on a website being deluged with unsolicited mail, causing valid enquiries and sales leads to be lost, wasting employee time. The perception of the problem of spam is as big as the reality.
In response to this growing problem, a number of free and commercial applications and services have been developed to help network administrators and email users combat Spam. Free to use, flexible, and effective, SpamAssassin has become the most popular open source antispam application. So what makes SpamAssassin the right choice for your network? Effectiveness and configurability for me explains Alistair McDonald, author of SpamAssassin: A Practical guide to Configuration, Customization and Integration. SpamAssassin works pretty well out of the box, but a small amount of time spent with it can reap great rewards. Typical figures quoted are 80% effectiveness out of the box, and 95% with some minor customizations.
SpamAssassin allows external Spam filtering services to be integrated. It uses a plug-in approach so that it’s easy to add support for a new technique when SURBLs came in, a SpamAssassin plugin was developed to use them. Now, the plugin is part of the main SpamAssassin distribution. The SpamAssassin community reacts quickly to changes in spam, and new rules or plugins are available very quickly. It’s not just in spam filtering that SpamAssassin excels, it’s also very flexible in how it’s configured. If you want all users to share spam definitions, it’s easy to do. On the other hand, if you want all users to use individual settings, again, it’s easy. Or a group of users can share settings, while others have their own. Flexibility extends to trapping spam. If you are bothered by a particular type of spam, you can write your own rules to detect it or you may find that someone else has already published a third party ruleset that deals with it.
Alistair McDonalds book is a comprehensive guide to the features, options, and implementation strategies you need to get the most of out SpamAssassin, helping you to set up and optimize it for your network.
What you will learn from this book
This comprehensive and detailed guide answers all your SpamAssassin questions. You will learn about:
o Spam detection and prevention
o Installing and running SpamAssassin
o Using Bayesian Filtering
o Configuring mail clients
o Rewriting spam messages
o Integrating SpamAssassin with external services
o Blacklisting and whitelisting
o Increasing Performance
o Using SpamAssassin as a service
o Using SpamAssassin with Fetchmail, postfix, sendmail, Exim, Qmail, procmail
o SpamAssassin rules
Approach
Written specifically for busy network and system administrators, the book is a detailed and practical guide to implementing the right antispam solution for your network and your business requirements. Youll go from a detailed walk through of initial set up, to advanced configuration options like Bayesian filtering, listing, rewriting, and rules. The book shows how to optimize SpamAssassin for all major mail servers and clients.
Who this book is written for
If you are a network or system administrator and youre either using or evaluating SpamAssassin, this book will increase your understanding and transform your productivity.
Alistair McDonald
Alistair McDonald is a freelance IT consultant based in the UK. He has worked in IT for over 15 years and specializes in C++ and Perl development and IT infrastructure management. He is a strong advocate of open source, and has strong cross-platform skills. He prefers vim over vi, emacs over Xemacs or vim, and bash over ksh or csh.
Additional Resources
www.SpamAssassinBook.com
A comprehensive website dedicated to Alistair McDonalds book. Containing the full Table of Contents and two free chapters, this website is an ideal showcase for those interested in purchasing the book.
For more information about the book, visit Packts website: www.packtpub.com/book/spamassassin
For a cover graphic: http://www.packtpub.com/images/100×123/1904811124.png
SpamAssassin: A Practical guide to Configuration, Customization and Integration ISBN: 1904811124, Pages: 220, $35.99, 22.49, 33.29
contact@packtpub.com
www.PACKTPUB.com
About Packt Publishing
Packt publish books that aim to help you get things done with software. The companys books are different in two ways:
Focused
They have developed a business model that allows them to publish books on areas that might otherwise be left without quality independent documentation. They do this by focusing on selling direct and online. This reduces wasted expense and means it’s profitable for authors and for Packt to publish the focused books that you need.
Fresh
Many of the topics Packt cover are rapidly evolving, often with multiple releases each year. Because every book they sell is printed individually, they can keep their material fresh and up to date. This is not possible in the old book publishing model.