[SA-exim] Looking for feedback on SA-Exim funtionality

[Dickenson, Steven]

Jerry Rasmussen wrote:
> I am trying to put together a case to use SA-Exim in my current work
> place.  One of the business requirements is "Create policies to
> process mail based on individual and groups of sender/receiver " 
> Does anyone know if there is a way to accomplish this with SA-Exim. 
> I have used Spamassassin on my home network for some time but have
> not tried to use it in this way.  If someone can offer any help or
> insight it would be greatly appreciated.      

If individual user preferences are a requirement, SA-Exim and the like are
not for you.  SA-Exim operates at SMTP time, where a message can contain
multiple recipient.  This makes per-user options almost impossible to
implement, although people have tried.

In my mind, there's only two proper ways to deal with spam: reject it during
the SMTP session with a 5xx error, or accept the message and sort it into a
spam folder.  Generating an NDR after the SMTP session is simply contributes
to the spam problem, as you're now creating spam in the case of forged
e-mail addresses.  Silently trashing mail is a violation of good mail
principles, since your delivery system is now unreliable.

It all comes down to what's right for your environment.  I've found that for
most businesses, a site-wide setup rejecting high-scoring spam messages
works quite well.  For individual environments like a home server with
multiple users or an ISP, individual user preferences and bayes databases
are a must.

In the later case, you don't want to be responsible for the daily upkeep of
such a setup, as it's time consuming and a possible invasion of privacy.
Use a web-based system like Maia Mailguard to put quarantining and filtering
into the hands of the end-users.

Steven
---
Steven Dickenson <sdickenson at keyschool.org>
Network Administrator
The Key School, Annapolis Maryland