Provided by: mailfilter_0.8.7-1build1_amd64 bug

NAME

       mailfilterex - Mailfilter configuration file examples

SYNOPSIS

       $HOME/.mailfilterrc examples

DESCRIPTION

       For  a  description of the rcfile format and its keywords see the mailfilterrc(5) man page
       or get a basic set of options from either the INSTALL file or the doc/  directory  of  the
       Mailfilter distribution.

       This  man  page  contains  several  configuration examples and real-life use cases for the
       Mailfilter program.

EXAMPLES

       If not stated otherwise, the following examples assume  you  are  using  extended  Regular
       Expressions,  compared to Mailfilter's default, basic type. General information on Regular
       Expressions can be found in the regex(7) man page or in any good book on  UNIX/POSIX.  You
       could  also  use  slightly  modified  examples from procmail(1) if it is available on your
       system.

   Filtering Domains
       To create a very restrictive set of filter rules at least two  keywords  should  be  used:
       ALLOW and DENY. DENY could match all messages coming from an annoying public mail service,
       while ALLOW matches messages from a good friend who also uses this annoying public mailer.

              DENY = "^From:.*public-mail\.com"
              ALLOW = "^From:.*friend@public-mail\.com"

       These two lines are enough to block all but your friend's e-mail from the  public-mail.com
       domain.

   Case Sensivity
       In  general  case-sensivity is controlled by the REG_CASE keyword. Having Mailfilter treat
       expressions case-insensitive is almost always more efficient.

              REG_CASE = "no"
              DENY = "^Subject:.*win money"

       In this example Mailfilter would delete all messages with subject lines like `WIN  MONEY',
       `Win Money' or any other mix of capital and non-capital characters. REG_CASE makes filters
       ignore the case.

       A more complex set up can be achieved by additionally using the DENY_CASE keyword.

              DENY_CASE = "^Subject:.*BUSINESS"

       In this example only e-mails that have `BUSINESS' in their subject match the filter,  even
       though  in  general  Mailfilter  ignores  the  case.  So in this example all messages with
       `business' or `Business' in their subjects would not be affected by this filter.

       Such an option is very useful if you are not  interested  in  commercial  bulk  mail  that
       offers  amazing  business opportunities, but in all your business partners who contact you
       by e-mail.

   Defining Friends
       The keyword ALLOW can be used to override any spam filters. Similar to the earlier example
       ALLOW defines a `friend'.

              ALLOW = "^Subject:.*mailfilter"

       Adding  this  rule  to  the  rcfile  would  mean  all messages that contain anything about
       Mailfilter in their subject lines can pass the spam filters. But even friends tend to send
       large  e-mails sometimes to share their joy about the latest joke that just made the round
       in their office. In such cases a limit can be defined that affects particularly `friends'.

              MAXSIZE_ALLOW = 500000

       Setting MAXSIZE_ALLOW to 500000 means no message can be larger than 500  kBytes.  (Scanned
       `office-jokes' are usually around that size.)

   Negative Message Filters
       In  order  to create a very restrictive spam protection it can be more useful sometimes to
       define which e-mails should not be deleted instantly and consequently get rid of  messages
       that  can  not be matched to this criterion - rather than vice versa. This can be achieved
       by using negation. The typical use case is looking at the message tags `To:' or  `Cc:'  of
       an e-mail.

              DENY <> "^(To|Cc):.*my-email@address\.com"

       Having  added such a filter to your personal rule set keeps away a lot of spam that is not
       directly addressed to your e-mail  account.  Since  this  is  a  very  aggressive  way  of
       filtering, you are well advised to keep your `friends list' up to date. Also note that the
       above  example,  using  the  logical  OR  operator,  works  only  with  extended   Regular
       Expressions.

   Scores
       Instead  of  setting  up  spam  filters, it is also possible to define scores which can be
       accumulated until a  certain  threshold  is  reached.   This  is  very  useful  to  delete
       advertisements on mailing lists, for instance.  Highscore marks the threshold:

              HIGHSCORE = 100
              SCORE +100 = "^Subject:.*viagra"
              SCORE +100 = "^Content-Type:.*html"
              SCORE -100 = "^(To|From):.*my_mailing_list"

       This  simple  example  is  useful  to  delete mails with a score greater than 100, i.e. if
       someone sends an HTML mail to my_mailing_list, the message will reach score  0.   However,
       should  an  HTML  mail  regarding Viagra reach the list, then the message will classify as
       spam, because it reached an overall score of 100.

       The MAXSIZE_SCORE keyword can be used to add to the accumulated score for an e-mail.   The
       following  will  cause all emails not directly addressed to the recipient and greater than
       60000 bytes in size to be deleted (a useful way of rejecting many common MS targeted worms
       and trojans which can clog up your inbox).

              HIGHSCORE = 100
              MAXSIZE_SCORE +50 = 60000
              SCORE +50 <> "^(To|Cc):.*my-email@address\.com"

       This is a less aggressive way of dealing with e-mail sizes than the using the MAXSIZE_DENY
       keyword.  Note that this example (by using the expression (To|Cc):.*my-email@address\.com)
       works only with extended Regular Expressions.

   General Message Size Limits
       It is always a good idea to define a very general size limit for e-mails.  Mailfilter uses
       the keyword MAXSIZE_DENY for that purpose.

              MAXSIZE_DENY = 200000

       Setting it to 200 kBytes can save you a couple of hours, depending on how  much  mail  you
       get  everyday.  Messages bigger than that get deleted on the server, unless they match any
       of the ALLOW rules. To achieve maximum efficiency it makes sense to use both  MAXSIZE_DENY
       and MAXSIZE_ALLOW. No one should block up your mail box, no `friends', no others.

       A  rule of thumb is to be twice as tolerant towards friends than you are towards anonymous
       people.

   Dealing with Duplicates
       Most people want to download a message only once, even though it might have been  sent  to
       two or three of their accounts at the same time. The simple line

              DEL_DUPLICATES = "yes"

       will  take  care  of  duplicates  and makes sure that only one copy of a message has to be
       delivered.

   Normalisation of Message Subjects
       Every now and then some clever sales person comes up with the brilliant idea to wrap  spam
       in  funny  little characters. If you get a message with a subject line similar to this one
       `,L.E-G,A.L; ,C.A-B`L`E, .B-O`X`', then ordinary filters would fail to detect the junk.

              NORMAL = "yes"

       Adding this directive to the rcfile tells Mailfilter to `normalise' subject strings,  i.e.
       leave  in only the alpha-numeric characters and delete the rest.  `,L.E-G,A.L; ,C.A-B`L`E,
       .B-O`X`' would then become `LEGAL CABLE BOX' which can easily be matched to a spam filter.

       Note that Mailfilter first tries to match the original subject string, before it checks on
       the normalised one.

   Control Mechanism
       Since  Mailfilter  deletes  e-mails  remotely,  before they have to be downloaded into the
       local machine, it is also important to know what is going on while the  program  is  being
       executed. The least you should do is define a proper level of verbosity and a log file.

              LOGFILE = "$HOME/logs/mailfilter-`date +"%h%y"'"
              VERBOSE = 3

       Level  three  is  the default verbosity level. Using it, Mailfilter reports information on
       deleted messages, run-time errors and dates to the screen and the log file.

       You can use `command' to embedd shell skripts into your path names.  In the above  example
       it is used to store log files separately for each month and year.

   Extended Regular Expressions
       For  advanced applications, the basic Regular Expressions are typically not sufficient. If
       you know the syntax and usage of the extended expressions, it is almost always a good idea
       to set REG_TYPE accordingly.

              REG_TYPE = "extended"

       Extended  expressions are more flexible, but also more sensitive towards syntax errors and
       the like.  Examples in this man page all use extended type.

NOTES

       If you are new to Regular Expressions and new to Mailfilter, you might want to  experiment
       a  bit,  before  you  accidentally  delete  messages  for  real. For such cases Mailfilter
       provides two keywords. TEST can be used to only simulate  the  deletion  of  messages  and
       SHOW_HEADERS stores all the e-mail headers that get examined by the program.

              TEST = "yes"
              SHOW_HEADERS = "$HOME/logs/mailfilter-headers.txt"

       Use  this  setup if you are not yet comfortable with the concept of spam filtering. It may
       help to understand Regular Expressions better and how to use them.

SEE ALSO

       mailfilter(1), mailfilterrc(5), procmailrc(5), procmailex(5), regex(7)

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2000-2020 Andreas Bauer <baueran@gmail.com>

       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO  warranty;  not
       even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.