NAME
Mail::SpamAssassin - Mail::Audit spam detector plugin
SYNOPSIS
my $mail = Mail::SpamAssassin::NoMailAudit->new();
my $spamtest = Mail::SpamAssassin->new();
my $status = $spamtest->check ($mail);
if ($status->is_spam ()) {
$status->rewrite_mail ();
$mail->accept("spamfolder");
} else {
$mail->accept(); # to default incoming mailbox
}
...
DESCRIPTION
Mail::SpamAssassin is a module to identify spam using text analysis and several internet-based realtime blacklists.
Using its rule base, it uses a wide range of heuristic tests on mail headers and body text to identify "spam", also known as unsolicited commercial email.
Once identified, the mail can then be optionally tagged as spam for later filtering using the user's own mail user-agent application.
This module also implements a Mail::Audit plugin, allowing SpamAssassin to be used in a Mail::Audit filter. If you wish to use a command-line filter tool, try the spamassassin
or spamd
tools provided.
Note that, if you're using Mail::Audit, the constructor for the Mail::Audit object must use the nomime
option, like so:
my $ma = new Mail::Audit ( nomime => 1 );
SpamAssassin also includes support for reporting spam messages to collaborative filtering databases, such as Vipul's Razor ( http://razor.sourceforge.net/ ).
METHODS
- $f = new Mail::SpamAssassin( [ { opt => val, ... } ] )
-
Constructs a new
Mail::SpamAssassin
object. You may pass the following attribute-value pairs to the constructor.- rules_filename
-
The filename to load spam-identifying rules from. (optional)
- userprefs_filename
-
The filename to load preferences from. (optional)
- userstate_dir
-
The directory user state is stored in. (optional)
- config_text
-
The text of all rules and preferences. If you prefer not to load the rules from files, read them in yourself and set this instead. As a result, this will override the settings for
rules_filename
anduserprefs_filename
. - languages_filename
-
If you want to be able to use the language-guessing rule
UNDESIRED_LANGUAGE_BODY
, and are usingconfig_text
instead ofrules_filename
anduserprefs_filename
, you will need to set this. It should be the path to the languages file normally found in the SpamAssassin rules directory. - local_tests_only
-
If set to 1, no tests that require internet access will be performed. (default: 0)
- dont_copy_prefs
-
If set to 1, the user preferences file will not be created if it doesn't already exist. (default: 0)
- save_pattern_hits
-
If set to 1, the patterns hit can be retrieved from the
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgStatus
object. Used for debugging. - home_dir_for_helpers
-
If set, the HOME environment variable will be set to this value when using test applications that require their configuration data, such as Razor, Pyzor and DCC.
- username
-
If set, the
username
attribute will use this as the current user's name. Otherwise, the default is taken from the runtime environment (ie. this process' effective UID under UNIX).
If none of
rules_filename
,userprefs_filename
, orconfig_text
is set, theMail::SpamAssassin
module will search for the configuration files in the usual installed locations. - $status = $f->check ($mail)
-
Check a mail, encapsulated in a
Mail::Audit
orMail::SpamAssassin::Message
object, to determine if it is spam or not.Returns a
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgStatus
object which can be used to test or manipulate the mail message.Note that the
Mail::SpamAssassin
object can be re-used for further messages without affecting this check; in OO terminology, theMail::SpamAssassin
object is a "factory". However, if you do this, be sure to call thefinish()
method on the status objects when you're done with them. - $status = $f->learn ($mail, $id, $isspam, $forget)
-
Learn from a mail, encapsulated in a
Mail::Audit
orMail::SpamAssassin::Message
object.If
$isspam
is set, the mail is assumed to be spam, otherwise it will be learnt as non-spam.If
$forget
is set, the attributes of the mail will be removed from both the non-spam and spam learning databases.$id
is an optional message-identification string, used internally to tag the message. If it isundef
, the Message-Id of the message will be used. It should be unique to that message.Returns a
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgLearner
object which can be used to manipulate the learning process for each mail.Note that the
Mail::SpamAssassin
object can be re-used for further messages without affecting this check; in OO terminology, theMail::SpamAssassin
object is a "factory". However, if you do this, be sure to call thefinish()
method on the learner objects when you're done with them.learn()
andcheck()
can be run using the same factory.init_learner()
must be called before using this method. - $f->init_learner ( [ { opt => val, ... } ] )
-
Initialise learning. You may pass the following attribute-value pairs to this method.
- caller_will_untie
-
Whether or not the code calling this method will take care of untie'ing from the Bayes databases (by calling
finish_learner()
) (optional, default 0). - force_expire
-
Should an expiration run be forced to occur immediately? (optional, default 0).
- wait_for_lock
-
Whether or not to wait a long time for locks to complete (optional, default 0).
- $f->rebuild_learner_caches ({ opt => val })
-
Rebuild any cache databases; should be called after the learning process. Options include:
verbose
, which will output diagnostics tostdout
if set to 1. - $f->finish_learner ()
-
Finish learning.
- $f->signal_user_changed ( [ { opt => val, ... } ] )
-
Signals that the current user has changed (possibly using
setuid
), meaning that SpamAssassin should close any per-user databases it has open, and re-open using ones appropriate for the new user.Note that this should be called after reading any per-user configuration, as that data may override some paths opened in this method. You may pass the following attribute-value pairs:
- username
-
The username of the user. This will be used for the
username
attribute. - user_dir
-
A directory to use as a 'home directory' for the current user's data, overriding the system default. This directory must be readable and writable by the process.
- $status = $f->check_message_text ($mailtext)
-
Check a mail, encapsulated in a plain string, to determine if it is spam or not.
Otherwise identical to
$f-
check()> above. - $f->report_as_spam ($mail, $options)
-
Report a mail, encapsulated in a
Mail::Audit
object, as human-verified spam. This will submit the mail message to live, collaborative, spam-blocker databases, allowing other users to block this message.It will also submit the mail to SpamAssassin's Bayesian learner.
Options is an optional reference to a hash of options. Currently these can be:
- dont_report_to_razor
-
Inhibits reporting of the spam to Razor; useful if you know it's already been listed there.
- dont_report_to_dcc
-
Inhibits reporting of the spam to DCC; useful if you know it's already been listed there.
- dont_report_to_pyzor
-
Inhibits reporting of the spam to Pyzor; useful if you know it's already been listed there.
- $f->revoke_as_spam ($mail, $options)
-
Revoke a mail, encapsulated in a
Mail::Audit
object, as human-verified ham. This will revoke the mail message from live, collaborative, spam-blocker databases, allowing other users to block this message.It will also submit the mail to SpamAssassin's Bayesian learner as nonspam.
Options is an optional reference to a hash of options. Currently these can be:
- dont_report_to_razor
-
Inhibits revoking of the spam to Razor.
- $f->add_address_to_whitelist ($addr)
-
Given a string containing an email address, add it to the automatic whitelist database.
- $f->add_all_addresses_to_whitelist ($mail)
-
Given a mail message, find as many addresses in the usual headers (To, Cc, From etc.), and the message body, and add them to the automatic whitelist database.
- $f->remove_address_from_whitelist ($addr)
-
Given a string containing an email address, remove it from the automatic whitelist database.
- $f->remove_all_addresses_from_whitelist ($mail)
-
Given a mail message, find as many addresses in the usual headers (To, Cc, From etc.), and the message body, and remove them from the automatic whitelist database.
- $f->add_address_to_blacklist ($addr)
-
Given a string containing an email address, add it to the automatic whitelist database with a high score, effectively blacklisting them.
- $f->add_all_addresses_to_blacklist ($mail)
-
Given a mail message, find addresses in the From headers and add them to the automatic whitelist database with a high score, effectively blacklisting them.
Note that To and Cc addresses are not used.
- $f->reply_with_warning ($mail, $replysender)
-
Reply to the sender of a mail, encapsulated in a
Mail::Audit
object, explaining that their message has been added to spam-tracking databases and deleted. To be used in conjunction withreport_as_spam
. The$replysender
argument should contain an email address to use as the sender of the reply message. - $text = $f->remove_spamassassin_markup ($mail)
-
Returns the text of the message, with any SpamAssassin-added text (such as the report, or X-Spam-Status headers) stripped.
Note that the $mail object is not modified.
- $f->read_scoreonly_config ($filename)
-
Read a configuration file and parse only scores from it. This is used to safely allow multi-user daemons to read per-user config files without having to use
setuid()
. - $f->load_scoreonly_sql ($username)
-
Read configuration paramaters from SQL database and parse scores from it. This will only take effect if the perl
DBI
module is installed, and the configuration parametersuser_scores_dsn
,user_scores_sql_username
, anduser_scores_sql_password
are set correctly.The username in
$username
will also be used for theusername
attribute of the Mail::SpamAssassin object. - $f->set_persistent_address_list_factory ($factoryobj)
-
Set the persistent address list factory, used to create objects for the automatic whitelist algorithm's persistent-storage back-end. See
Mail::SpamAssassin::PersistentAddrList
for the API these factory objects must implement, and the API the objects they produce must implement. - $f->compile_now ($use_user_prefs)
-
Compile all patterns, load all configuration files, and load all possibly-required Perl modules.
Normally, Mail::SpamAssassin uses lazy evaluation where possible, but if you plan to fork() or start a new perl interpreter thread to process a message, this is suboptimal, as each process/thread will have to perform these actions.
Call this function in the master thread or process to perform the actions straightaway, so that the sub-processes will not have to.
If
$use_user_prefs
is 0, this will initialise the SpamAssassin configuration without reading the per-user configuration file and it will assume that you will callread_scoreonly_config
at a later point. - $failed = $f->lint_rules ()
-
Syntax-check the current set of rules. Returns the number of syntax errors discovered, or 0 if the configuration is valid.
- $f->create_default_prefs ($filename, $username [ , $userdir ] )
-
Copy default preferences file into home directory for later use and modification, if it does not already exist and
dont_copy_prefs
is not set.
PREREQUISITES
Mail::Audit
Mail::Internet
COREQUISITES
Net::DNS
MORE DOCUMENTATION
See also http://spamassassin.org/ for more information.
SEE ALSO
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgStatus
spamassassin
BUGS
http://bugzilla.spamassassin.org/
AUTHOR
Justin Mason <jm /at/ jmason.org>
COPYRIGHT
SpamAssassin is distributed under Perl's Artistic license.
AVAILABILITY
The latest version of this library is likely to be available from CPAN as well as:
http://spamassassin.org/