Can I lower SpamAssassin points for CHARSET_FARAWAY_HEADER ?

Question

Level 1

10 points

Can I lower SpamAssassin points for CHARSET_FARAWAY_HEADER ?

Even though I have Chinese (zh) set as an accepted language in Server Admin, emails from Chinese correspondents still get graded with 3.2 points by the rule CHARSET FARAWAYHEADER (A foreign language charset used in headers).

In order to curb SPAM effectively I have my Minimum junk mail score set at 2... and BAYES and AWL are not enough negative points to allow the legit foreign language header emails through.

How can I modify this specific rule to a lesser amount?

Thanks!
Keith

G4 Dual 500 Power PC, Mac OS X (10.4.8), OSX Server

Posted on Jan 9, 2007 7:11 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Joel Mcintosh1

Level 3

538 points

Jan 9, 2007 7:34 AM in response to Tiredhead

I get a lot of mail from Korea, and I've found several rules that can penalize a foreign sender.

You change score values in your local.cf file located at:

/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf

Just add something like ...

#Modified Scores
score CHARSET FARAWAYHEADER 2.2 #Reduce 3.2 score for foreign senders

This rule reduces the penalty for foreign senders to 2.2 from the 3.2 score. This is what I used and it seems to work pretty well.

You might also want to look at some other rules that can effect foreign senders. I've also modified the following:

score MIME BASE64TEXT 1.3 #Reduce 1.885 score for foreign senders
score MIME CHARSETFARAWAY 1.5 #Reduced 2.45 score for foreign senders

After you save the file, run

spamassassin -D --lint

and make sure everything looks good.

Then stop and restart mail.

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Answer 2

pterobyte

Level 6

11,098 points

Jan 9, 2007 7:34 AM in response to Tiredhead

Add:
score CHARSET FARAWAYHEADER 0.5 (or any score you like)
to local.cf or user_prefs inside /var/clamav/.spamassassin

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Answer 3

Tiredhead Author

Level 1

10 points

Jan 9, 2007 3:11 PM in response to Joel Mcintosh1

That's exactly what I needed! I believe altering the MIME rules will be a huge help also.

I ran spamassassin -D --lint as you suggested and lint: 5 issues detected. please rerun with debug enabled for more information. As soon as I finish typing this I'll try to find out how to enable debug.

THANKS,
Keith

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Answer 4

Jan 9, 2007 3:17 PM in response to Tiredhead

Don't bother.

It's nothing you did. Those "issues" are present in the standard install of local.cf -- they are harmless.

Look at http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/SpamAssassinon_Mac_OS_XServer

Scroll down to "Lint (the nasty stuff that grows between your toes)."

It shows you how to get rid of those issues.

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Answer 5

pterobyte

Level 6

11,098 points

Jan 9, 2007 11:02 PM in response to Tiredhead

As Joel said, these issues are purely cosmetic. If you however you'd like to get rid of them, issue "spamtrainer -f" to fix them.

Alex

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