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FuzzyOCR for SpamAssassin (how to halt those annoying spams with Images in them)

Wed, 03/01/2007 - 17:19 — David Goodwin

Image Spam - FuzzyOCR

Recently, in the 'battle against spam' I have had an increasing number of emails with a random assortment of text designed to defeat SpamAssassin and an attached image which contains the real 'payload' advertising some sort of scam/drug/product.

Needless to say, I've been adding various blacklists (1, 2, 3, 4) to Postfix in an attempt at reducing the tide of image spam, but none have really solved the problem (i.e. Kat still moans).

Thankfully, while reading Linux Magazine, I came across an article on FuzzyOCR. So after upgrading SpamAssassin via Backports.org and obviously installing FuzzyOCR, I'm glad to say that less of the wretched stuff seems to be getting through :-)

Installation was fairly painless, the included documentation seemed to do the trick and all the packages I needed (aside from SpamAssassin and FuzzyOCR) were in Sarge anyway.

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Comments

Wed, 03/01/2007 - 22:50 — pen (not verified)

I'm having the same problem

I'm having the same problem here. Do you know if you can use SpamAssassin with Apple Mail? (preferably without setting up a whole mail server on my laptop...)

Wed, 03/01/2007 - 23:14 — David Goodwin

*shrug* Evolution?

I believe Evolution can use spamassassin to detect spam - but I don't know much more than that.

(I assume applemail allows for pop3 collection, so evolution could retrieve it and send it through spamassassin....)

David.

Thu, 04/01/2007 - 07:14 — David Goodwin

alternatively...

Obviously you could use fetchmail/getmail to suck the mail down via pop3 (assuming applemail allows for this), and then feed it into postfix or friend - if you want a server side solution.

Thu, 04/01/2007 - 15:25 — pen (not verified)

I found a way to do it (it's

I found a way to do it (it's at http://www.stupidfool.org/docs/sa.html )

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