PHP/shell script

[brad]

Jonathan,

Thanks for the advice.  We have another newer platform that uses
Postfix/Mysql/Cyrus/SpamAssassin/SquirrelMail, but this particular
client doesn't want to pay for the "Advanced" features.  They are used
to cutting and pasting email addresses from spammers into an email and
sending it to me.  I then cut and paste it into /etc/mail/access.  Sort
of a backwards and losing approach to spam filtering I know, but that is
their choice and in their defense, this method is blocking 8,000-15,000
spam messages a day.  So, despite the good advice, I am going to have to
continue with this approach to lessen my load of having to cut and paste
from their email into the access file (now taking a good hour a day,
maybe 2 on Mondays).  On a side note, the only people that will
legitimately have access to this web page are administrators of the
company, not end users.

Thanks,

Brad

Jonathan wrote:
 
> I would suggest a different approach.  
> 
> First off, you don't want to give the "user" that Apache and PHP run as full 
> control of your sendmail.  Any slip-up in your PHP code and you're a spam 
> generator instead of a filter.
> 
> PHP would have to a) re-hash the database of whatever control file you 
> modified, and b) restart sendmail - niether of which you want potentially 
> controlled by the web page.
> 
> Second, there are a number of existing spam filtration systems that allow 
> end-users to report spam, to whitelist specific addresses for themselves, to 
> report spam to clearinghouses so it can be blocked globally.  Why reinvent 
> the wheel?
> 
> I'm not terribly happy with the current release of SpamAssassin, but that's 
> because I don't store mail on the server that's doing the filtering and it's 
> not easy for me to "train" the beysian filters.  The earlier release without 
> those filters worked better for me, but gave some people too many false 
> positives.
> 
> The filters I know of don't use a PHP web page for end-user feedback, I think 
> they use a pseudo email address.
> 
>