spam report

Holy moly, there’s a lot of spam out there.

A few weeks ago, I started delving into the black arts of procmail and spamassassin - programs that filter mail before it ever hits the inbox. Procmail filters the mail, spamassassin heuristically evaluates it to see if it’s spam. I’ve inserted a line in my .login file to read the log of activity since my last login. Here’s an example from this morning:

[brett@scandium ~]$ mailstat -st .procmail/pmlog.old
 110840      5 /var/spool/mail/brett
   2852       1 lists/M-W.WORD-OF-THE-DAY
  50656      14 lists/innercircle
  14584      11 lists/myia
  44776       7 lists/securityfocus
  97508      22 spam/cutter
  11000       5 spam/inner-flame
  76397      12 spam/spamassassin

That’s 72 messages I didn’t need to see immediately (39 spam), and 5 that I did, in one evening.

I think I’ll comment out that line in .login and see what it’s like after a whole week.