Anti-Spam Tool Kit

Long ago, unsolicited commercial email graduated from annoyance to serious problem. The problem won't go away until the nature of electronic mail changes (to include a per-message fee, for example), which means that there's lots of work for administrators in managing spam and keeping its load off their networks. That's what Anti-Spam Tool Kit is all about. With balanced coverage of networks making use of Microsoft Windows and those based on various forms of Unix, this book delivers the goods on blacklisting, filtering, and sorting strategies for reducing spam while minimizing the effect of anti-spam tools on legitimate electronic mail.

Unlike a lot of systems administration books with soft, filler-laden chapters, this one's all business. It combines survey data (that is, broad-based data that helps you compare alternative anti-spam solutions) with policy advice (how much old mail to archive, for example) and fairly detailed administrative instructions (such as how to automatically query databases of open mail relays). Most of the covered software appears on the companion CD-ROM, at least in demo form. You can get it all online, but this is a convenient package, and--taken together with the authors' well-written guidance--it'll help you do about all you can to minimize spam's effects on the servers you manage. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to cut down on unsolicited commercial email (UCE or spam) by using DNS blacklists, filters (mainly Bayesian classifiers), and the anti-spam features of various email clients (for Windows, Mac, and Linux). Particularly extensive coverage of SpamAssassin appears in this book.