Hotmail Watcher is a Firefox add-on that can notify the user whenever new email has arrived in a Hotmail account. The extension does not need to be configured with the Hotmail username or password as it takes the information directly from the cookie that Hotmail sets.

The user needs to be logged into the Hotmail website before the extension can start showing notifications of new emails in the email account.

The extension places an icon with a counter in the Firefox status bar upon installation. The counter will be updated as long as the user is logged into the Hotmail account. A left-click on the icon opens the Hotmail website and resets the counter, a right-click displays the add-on’s options and a middle click to check for new emails directly.

The extension is configured to check every 20 minutes for new emails. This can be changed to a timeframe between every 5 minutes and every 4 hours. It is furthermore possible to disable the automatic checks and check only on the user’s request.

Sound, display and blink alerts can be displayed to the user whenever new emails have been found in the Hotmail email account.

Hotmail Watcher is an experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Netbook users who access Gmail on the web face the same problem. Many of the elements on the Gmail website take up valuable space that should be reserved for more important elements like the emails and messages that the Gmail users wants to read.

The Greasemonkey userscript Better Gmail: Mini Wide adds a special netbook mode to Google’s mail service that removes a lot of clutter from the service on demand. The w key has been assigned by the developer to optimize the display of Gmail for netbook users. It removes the Gmail sidebar and header area so that only the main message area remains.

The search form, all navigational elements, ads, sidebar links and widgets are removed from the display upon pressing the w key after installing the Greasemonkey script which basically makes the message area use the whole width of the computer screen. Another key press displays all the elements again which makes the script a comfortable option on netbooks.

Better Gmail: Mini Wide can be installed directly from the Userscripts website. It worked fine in the latest version of Firefox and might also work in other browsers that support userscripts. Firefox users need to install the Greasemonkey add-on before they can install the userscript.

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta is a preview release that fixes a total of 96 different bugs including crash, performance and security fixes.

One of the problems that we have experiencing lately for instance was the inability to save messages after they have been sent. This issue has been fixed in the new beta release of the email client.

The release notes point out that the following notable changes have been made to Thunderbird 3.1 Beta:

Several fixes to improve upgrading from Thunderbird 2.
Several fixes for auto complete, tabs, and activity manager.
Several design improvements and corrections to the interface.
Stability and memory improvements.

The full list of bug fixes and changes is available at Bugzilla which lists a total of 119 bugs of which 10 have been classified as critical and five as major. The majority of critical bugs are related to application crashes with the exception of the DNS prefetch security issue, a startup issue and one upgrade issue.

Thunderbird 3.1 Beta is available for all supported languages and operating systems. It is still a development release and should not be run in a work environment unless a proper disaster recovery option is available.

There has not however been a way to integrate other Google services that are related to Gmail into Thunderbird. The Google Calendar Tab add-on for Thunderbird 3 changes this. It basically only displays the web interface of Google Calendar in a new tab in Thunderbird.

And since the extension uses the same account all information from that Google Calendar account are already available in Thunderbird. It is possible to view, edit and add events to Google Calendar which are then also visible on the Google Calendar website. If the calendar has been configured to show popups then they will be shown in Thunderbird as well.

The extension for the email client supports both Google Calendar and Calendar for Google Apps. Google Calendar Tab is an interesting add-on for Thunderbird that aids Google Calendar users who work with Thunderbird to integrate their calendar into the email client. There are other options to do that. IIRC it is possible to integrate Google Calendar into Lightning as well.

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.01 is a security and stability release that fixes several issues in the email client. The list of changes lists 124 bugs that have been fixed in the new release including 25 bugs that have received a critical rating and 17 that received a major rating by the developers.

Most of the critical issues that have been fixed are related to crashes but there also have been some security fixes. Users who are planning to install Thunderbird 3.01 should take a look at the known issues before they do so to make sure that they do not run into problems using the email software.

Thunderbird 3.01 is available at the Mozilla ftp server but also at popular download portals such as Softpedia.

Google has released a Gmail Ninja guide to further that popularity. The guide is divided into four different grades: white, green and black belt as well as Gmail master that begin with the basics and slowly build up to advanced tips that even expert Gmail users might not have heard about.

White Belt:

Use stars to indicate a note is special.
Reply by chat.
Organize your email with labels.
Clean up your inbox using “Move to” — it works just like folders.
Search your mail instead of sorting.
Archive messages to tidy up your inbox without deleting anything.
Import your email and contacts from your old address.
Spice up your inbox with a theme.
Join forces to rid the world of spam.

Green Belt:

Talk face-to-face with video chat.
Use Tasks as a handy to-do list.
Use filters to control the flow of incoming mail.
Highlight important emails using filters and colored labels.
Send email from your phone.
Preview attachments without downloading them.
Avoid email gaffes with Undo Send.
Tell your friends what you’re up to with a status message.
Never forget an attachment again.
Tell everyone when you’ll be back with vacation responder.
Nothing says “I’m excited” like a bouncing happy face emoticon.
Save notes in your drafts

Black Belt:

Get through your mail faster with keyboard shortcuts.
Use search operators to find the exact message you’re looking for.
Filter your email with personalized email addresses.
See which messages were sent right to you.
Make Gmail go where the internet doesn’t.
Quickly add multiple attachments to an email.
Add “(EOM)” to the subject of one-liner messages.
Set up canned responses instead of typing the same reply over and over again.
Click less and watch more using YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, and Yelp previews.
Use quick links to get anywhere in Gmail with one click.
Send and archive in one step.
Send and receive mail from multiple addresses
Show people who you are with a picture.

Gmail Master:

Bring Google Calendar and Docs to Gmail.
Send SMS text messages right from Gmail.
Forget to sign out of a public computer? Sign out remotely.
Personalize your RSS feeds in web clips.
Search for superstars by name.
Use Gmail on your own domain.
Shift-click to quickly select multiple messages.
Set Gmail as your default email client.
Emphasize the important words in chat.
Quote selected text to respond to a long thread.

Most of the tips contain a short description and then either a link to a detailed explanation or a video that explains the tip in detail. The tips are definitely worth checking out even if some of you might know most of them. [Gmail Tips]

Changes have been announced to the way http and https connections are handled in Gmail in light of recent events. Google decided to roll out https for everyone which will redirect any request to connect to Gmail to https.

Users who are confident in their network security can change this behavior in the Gmail options which basically have been swapped. Now it is possible to enable the http protocol in the options.

We are currently rolling out default https for everyone. If you’ve previously set your own https preference from Gmail Settings, nothing will change for your account. If you trust the security of your network and don’t want default https turned on for performance reasons, you can turn it off at any time by choosing “Don’t always use https” from the Settings menu. Gmail will still always encrypt the login page to protect your password. Google Apps users whose admins have not already defaulted their entire domains to https will have the same option.

Gmail users who are using the service offline will likely experience some problems, namely that the mail does not sync anymore and that shortcuts and bookmarks might behave differently. Google has provided a solution for this:

The quickest way to fix this is to disable the ‘Always use https’ option, so you’re accessing Gmail through an HTTP connection.

But, because using https is a more secure way of signing in to Gmail, we recommend that you switch your Offline Gmail so that it syncs with the https URL rather than http. To do so, follow these steps:

1) Make sure you’re online. You won’t be able to follow these steps while offline. You can always start over later, if you get disconnected.

2) Switch to http, not https. This is a temporary step. You’ll switch back to https in step 5.
a) Go to Settings.
b) In the “Browser Connection” section, choose “Don’t always use https”, and hit Save.
c) Go to http://mail.google.com.

3) Your mail will sync automatically. Wait until your Outbox is empty, and the sync icon is a check-mark.

4) Uninstall http Offline Gmail:
a) Click the sync icon.
b) Click Show Actions
c) Click Disable Offline Mail
d) When asked it you want to remove all mail, select Remove.
5) Switch back to https:
a) Go to Settings/Browser Connection.
b) Select “Always use https”, and hit Save.
c) You’ll automatically be directed to https://mail.google.com. 6) Install Offline Gmail on https. (If you’ve already done this, you can skip this step.)
a) Click Settings.
b) Click the Offline tab.
c) Click Enable Offline Mail for this computer and hit Save Changes. 7) (optional) Delete any old bookmarks or desktop shortcuts that go to http. Consider making new bookmarks that point to https. The http URL will still work while you’re online, but not while you’re offline, so it’s best to replace them, if you normally access Gmail using bookmarks or shortcuts.

Maildrop is another application that extends the original functionality of Dropbox. The service basically allows a Dropbox user to send files to a Dropbox account by email which can come in handy in several situations like accessing the Internet from a public computer system or from mobile devices that are not suited for downloading files.

MailDrop is an application that expands the scope of Dropbox to the inbox. Now you can upload files to Dropbox by email. Any emails with the label ‘Dropbox’ will automatically be sent to the ‘MailDrop’ folder in your Dropbox. Now files can be put on Dropbox from your mobile device or from any computer without having to login to Dropbox.

Mailbox will automatically monitor a configured email account for incoming emails that use a Dropbox label. All attachments with a Dropbox label will automatically be placed into the Maildrop folder of the local Dropbox installation.

Dropbox will query the mail server using IMAP which cannot be changed to another protocol. A good security precaution would be to create a new email account for Maildrop that is exclusively used to send files to Dropbox.

The program comes with an optional mail filter that can be used to ease the upload process by moving emails with a specific attachment to the Dropbox folder.

Maildrop is available at the developer’s website. It is a portable application that should be compatible with most Windows operating systems.

Another addition to the way conversations are displayed in Thunderbird is the Gmail Conversation View add-on. This add-on ports the way Gmail displays conversations to the Thunderbird email client. Each individual email is drawn with a border so that the computer user can distinguish them on first glance. The colored vertical lines are not needed in this view mode.

Installation of the add-on is unfortunately complicated. This can be attributed to the early experimental stage of the add-on above anything else. Gmail Conversation View requires the installation of either the Compact Header or the Customize Header Toolbar add-on.

Another step that is necessary (after installation of two of the add-ons) is the manual customization of the header toolbar in Thunderbird. This is done by right-clicking the email header and selecting customize. It is now important to drag and drop the button of the add-on – which is called View Full conversation – to the other buttons that are displayed in the email header.

A click on that new button will from now on change the view of that email from the standard Thunderbird view to the Gmail view. Those changes are temporary for now and gone as soon as the user moves away from that email conversation.

The developer has plans to extend the functionality. One interesting option would be to enable the Gmail conversation view mode permanently for all email conversations. Gmail Conversation View is compatible with all Thunderbird 3 versions. The latest version of the add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

The developer’s have not published a changelog detailing the changes between the second release candidate and the final release. The short time between both releases suggests that not much has been changed since then.

Thunderbird users who are still running Thunderbird 2 and other interested users might want to read up on the new key features of the email client:

• Tabbed Email: Provides the ability view individual emails and folders in tabs, and web pages via add-ons in tabs so users can quickly jump between them, just as one manages web pages in Mozilla’s Firefox. Folder tabs are remembered, so Thunderbird starts up pre-configured and personalized to each user.
• Filtered Search: Designed with search in mind, the new search interface in Thunderbird 3 contains filtering and timeline tools to help users quickly and accurately pin-point the exact email by word matches, correspondents or even attachment types at the moment they need it, all based on analysis of the user’s own emails.
• Message Archive: Archiving mail moves email from the inbox into the new archive folder system, de-cluttering the inbox while at the same time enabling users to find email months or years from now.
• One-click Address Book: A very quick and easy way to add people to an address book, by simply clicking on the star icon in the messages received from new correspondents.
• New Mail Account Setup Wizard: Getting started with Thunderbird 3 is faster than ever with the new account set-up wizard that requires simple information, like email addresses and passwords to get going instead of a user’s IMAP, SMTP, SSL/TLS settings.
• Smart Folders: Combines individual mailboxes to help manage multiple email accounts in one spot. For example, by selecting the Inbox, users can view all the incoming emails from all their different accounts without having to go to each email account separately.
• Add-ons Manager: The new add-ons manager can help users find, download, and install hundreds of add-ons enabling them to customize Thunderbird 3 and add functionality or change the appearance.
• Better Integration with Gmail: Now integrates with international versions of Gmail and Gmail’s special folders such as sent and trash.
• Better Integration with Windows and Mac OS X: Updated look and feel, improved import tools, search integration, and address book support for Windows 7, Vista and Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
• Gecko 1.9.1 Engine: The same Web page rendering engine and graphics infrastructure used in Firefox, provides the latest Web Standards support and security enhancements.
• Automated Updates: Thunderbird’s update system notifies users when a security update is available and automates the download and installation process to keep users safe.

The release notes do contain known issues on the other hand which should be read before updating or installing the new version of Thunderbird.

FTP Mail Zipper offers another possibility. It combines as the name suggest capabilities to zip, ftp and mail files. It can automatically zip files that are added to its interface and upload them to a ftp server. The information to download the files from the ftp server are then added to the email that is send to the recipient.

Some settings have to be configured during the first startup. This includes adding at least one ftp with account information to the program. FTP Mail Zipper supports ftp profiles which make it possible to switch quickly between different ftps.

It is furthermore possible to use an email template which will then be used automatically when sending the email to the recipient. The application has also an option to list the hosted files that have already been uploaded to ftp servers with the option to delete, rename or download those files.

FTP Mail Zipper is a handy portable software program for the Windows operating system. It is compatible with most versions of the Windows operating system and can be downloaded from the Freeware Files website.

It mentions a shutdown hang with high cpu usage and no open imap connections, something that we have been experiencing not regularly but frequently after updating to Thunderbird 3 RC1. The other three fixes have received one major and two normal ratings but they did not affect the email client’s stability or security.

Thunderbird 3 will automatically pick up the new version and suggest a download of it to the user. It is furthermore possible to download the new version of Thunderbird from the developer’s website where it is offered for all supported operating systems and languages. The same page is a good read for users who have not made the switch to Thunderbird 3 yet as it contains a list of the new features of the email program.

The best case for setting up an email account in Thunderbird 3 is that the user only needs to fill out three different parameters of which none are related to mail server host names or ports.

As you can see it is only necessary to fill out a name, email address and password in the beginning.

Thunderbird will now automatically try and discover the incoming and outgoing mail server including ports and security settings. These information are displayed on the same screen and a green light indicates that the discovery was successful.

It is now up to the user to either accept the discovered settings, edit them right away or opt for a manual setup which will lead to the same email setup options that Thunderbird 2 offered its users.

Edit makes it possible to edit parameters like the username, incoming server, incoming mail protocol, port and security settings on the same screen. These can be directly verified by Mozilla Thunderbird 3.

The mail server discovery works very well for popular email providers such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail. It can happen that Thunderbird is not able to discover those settings which often happens if the user hosts mail accounts by lesser known providers or on a virtual or dedicated server.

The only option that is then available is to opt for the manual setup to configure the email account so that it can be used in the email client.

Thunderbird 3 makes it very easy to setup email accounts especially if they are hosted by a popular email provider. These email users do not have to hunt down the mail server settings on the email providers website anymore since they are automatically discovered by Thunderbird.

Other new features include a tabbed interface to open multiple messages and mailboxes at once (Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a New Tab window. Middle-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a Tab in the background), a smart folder mode which combines mailboxes from several email accounts into one mailbox (think of one inbox that contains mails from multiple accounts), improved add-ons manager, address book and Gmail integration among other new features.

Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate 1 is available for download in all supported languages and for all operating systems at Mozilla Messaging. Users should check out the known issues in the release notes before they upgrade their version of the email client. The developers do mention that this release is not intended to be used in a productive environment. Make sure to backup all settings before performing the upgrade. (via Mozilla Messaging)

The following five add-ons have recently been added to the Mozilla Thunderbird extensions repository at the Mozilla website. Some of them are not yet compatible with the latest beta of Thunderbird 3. The email user needs to force compatibility in this case with the Nightly Tester Tools add-on (or edit the compatibility setting in the xpi file manually).

Extra Folder Columns

Thunderbird 2 users were able to display extra columns in the mail folder sidebar. These columns could display the size of each folder on the local hard drive, the total number of emails contained within and the amount of emails that have not been read yet. Not so with Thunderbird 3 which does not provide these additional columns for the folders at all.

Extra Folder Columns has been designed for Thunderbird 3 to add those three columns again to the web browser. All three data columns will be displayed by default but the user has the option to remove them individually so that only the columns are displayed that are of interest to the Thunderbird user.

download Extra Folder Columns

Show In/Out

Show In/Out has been designed for Thunderbird users who like to move email conversations, that is all incoming and outgoing emails, to one folder to have access to all emails of a conversation directly. Thunderbird by default does not show if an email was an incoming or outgoing email. That’s where Show In/Out steps in. It adds two new columns to the main window of Thunderbird. The first displays an icon showcasing if the email was incoming or outgoing, the second displays the name of the sender or recipient depending if the email was incoming or outgoing.

The developer has designed the add-on to replace the sender and recipient columns in the Thunderbird main window helping users who like to move all incoming and outgoing emails into the same folder.

download Show In/Out

ThunderBirthDay

ThunderBirthday will display the birthdays of email contacts in the Lightning calendar add-on. The extension has two dependencies that need to be installed before it can be installed. It first needs the Lighting calendar add-on for Thunderbird and second the MoreFunctionsForAddressBook add-on which adds the fields “birthday”, “birthmonth” and “birthyear” to the email address book.

Create a new calendar in Lightning by clicking File>New>Calendar… in the menu bar. Then choose “On My Computer” as location and “Birthdays from the Thunderbird addressbook” as type for your calendar. Also specify the address book to use as a source for birthdays. Finally choose a name for the new calendar.

Now open the “Edit Card” dialog of an address book card and set the birthday in the “Other data” tab. Note that these changes don’t take effect in the calendar until it gets reloaded. To do this either restart Thunderbird or right click on a calendar from the list, then choose “Reload Remote Calendars”.

Also note that the events generated by ThunderBirthDay cannot be modified with Lightning for the moment. Maybe future versions of the extension will be bidirectional.

download ThunderBirthDay

Forward

Thunderbird by default forwards email messages as attachments. This can be changed in Tools → Options → Composition → General so that the email messages are forwarded as inline messages instead. There is also an option in the Message menu to select either attachment or inline as the method of forwarding the selected emails in Thunderbird. This add-on simply moves this option to more prominent locations: The Forward button and Message context menus.

download Forward

Border Colors

If you have multiple email accounts configured in Thunderbird you might know that there is a chance that you send an email to a recipient from a wrong account. Border Colors is a very simple add-on for Thunderbird that color codes each account that has been configured in the email client. The colors have to be selected after the installation of the add-on as black is being used as the default color for all email accounts.

After configuration a border in the color that has been chosen during configuration will be shown when writing emails. A switch between accounts in the compose email window will also change the border color accordingly.

download Bordercolors

I hope you enjoyed this article. Please write a comment if you would like to have your say on a specific add-on mentioned in this article or would like to add one of your favorite Thunderbird add-ons so that other users can benefit from it as well.

The add-in is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and will install a new toolbar into the application after installation. It will also install various runtimes that are needed to run the Outlook add-in.

The options to export the data from Microsoft Outlook is then available from the new toolbar. It is here possible to export Outlook emails, notes, appointments, contacts or tasks into the following formats: MSG, unicode MSG, RTF, TXT, CSV, ICS, vCard, HTML, XML

The user can either select an Outlook folder or single items for the export of the data. Outlook Data Export can be downloaded from the program’s page over at the Codeplex website. It is only compatible with Microsoft Office 2007.

The process is very simply. The Thunderbird add-on will automatically display an option to unsubscribe from support mailing lists in the header of the emails that are send to the accounts that are managed in the desktop email client.

The Thunderbird user needs to click on the unsubscribe link in the header to initiate the process of unsubscribing from the mailing lists. This will display a prompt informing the user that the add-on will open a new email message which, when send by the user, will unsubscribe the email address from the mailing list.

The email usually consists of an email address of the service that send the mailing list email and subject unsubscribe in the email subject with no body text at all. The unsubscribe link is only displayed for mailing lists that use the Inxmail email marketing service which is used by global brands such as Coca Cola. The add-on is compatible with Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 3 up to beta 3 which excludes the latest release of Thunderbird 3 beta. The add-on can however be forced to be compatible with the Nightly Tester Tools. A download is available at the Thunderbird website over at Mozilla.

Email identities can be created in the account settings of the Thunderbird email client. The account settings can be reached from the top Tools menu. The user then needs to select one of the configured email accounts. A button Manage Identities should appear in the menu that is also displaying various information about the selected email account.

In there it is possible to add or edit email identities. It is for example possible to select a different SMTP server, signature or vcard, change mail folders, use a digital signature and specify a different email address. The email address can be the same but it does not have to be. It is even possible to add a completely unrelated email address for that new identity. You could theoretically configure the identity to send email that looks like its coming from any email account in the world (enter test@example.com for instance and send the mail to one of your accounts to see how it works).

When you write a new message, Thunderbird uses the default identity for the account you are working in. When you reply to a message, Thunderbird uses the identity that matches the address the message was originally sent to, if it can find a match in the account you are working in.

You can select any identity from any of your accounts when replying, forwarding or composing a new message by selecting it in the From drop down list box. If desired, you can also create a unique signature, specify the draft folder, what folder your copy of the sent message should be stored in, and what reply-to address should be used for each identity.

Additional information about email identities in Thunderbird are available a the Mozillazine website.

Most email users should already be familiar with the tips offered at the Gmail blog. Here are the five tips posted at the website:

• Remember to sign out
• Be careful about sending certain sensitive information via email
• Enable “Always use HTTPS.”
• Be wary of unexpected attachments.
• Make sure your account recovery information is up-to-date

Two of the five tips (being suspicious of attachments and careful about sending out information) are valid for all email accounts no matter where they are hosted and whether they are accessed from a website or desktop email software. These programs on the other hand make the tips one and three unnecessary. The email recovery tip on the other hand makes sense for all Gmail users. Gmail offers an option to add another email address to the account which can be used to retrieve Gmail login information or retake an account after it has been hacked by an attacker.

Do you think those tips are sufficient to protect email accounts or would you add other tips to the list?

Fortunately there is a tool for that. The tool? Spamassassin. Spamassassin is a very versatile SPAM tool that is part of the Apache Foundation. Spamassassin uses numerous means to detect SPAM including: DNS and Checksum based SPAM detection as well as Bayesian filtering, external programs, black lists, and online databases. These tools together make for a fairly powerful detection system.

In this article you are going to see how to install and configure Spamassassin to work in conjunction with Postfix to further enhance your email server.

Installing Spamassassin

Obviously the first thing you need to do is install Spamassassin. You will find Spamassassin in the Ubuntu repositories. And since this entire series has been laid on top of a Ubuntu Server installation, that is quite convenient. So, to install Spamassassin, open up your terminal window and issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install spamassassin

There may or may not be some dependencies to install in order for the Spamassassin  installation to complete. Go ahead and OK those. Once this installation is complete you are ready to start configuring.

Configuration

Before we actually get to the configuration it is important to understand the SPAM scoring system. With Spamassassin, messages are tagged as SPAM only when they have enough SPAM-matching characteristics (according to a scoring level). The scoring level is 0-5, however it’s not as simple as saying a 0 means it is 0% SPAM. The system is set up so that every characteristic can add to the overall score. For example a message tested to find a base64 attachment does not have a file name filtered with both bayes+net will add 0.224 to the over all score of the message. When all of the characteristic scores are added up, if they exceed the default score you have set in the configuration file, that message is considered SPAM.

Now that you have a basic understand of how the scoring system works. Let’s start configuring Spamassassin.

The main configuration file is /etc/spamassassin/local.cf. The first option you want to configure is the default score. Look for the line:

# required_score 5.0

The first thing you want to do is uncomment that line (by removing the “#” character) and then changing the score. A score of 5 is pretty high and sure to be SPAM. Understand the more you lower that score the likely you are of missing message messages that are tagged false-positives. A score of 3.5 is a fairly reliable score that will catch a lot of SPAM but not a lot of false positives.

Above this line are a couple of other options that are important. The first is the option to set the option:

report_safe

To 0. This option can be set to either 0 or 1. A zero means that if a message is found to be SPAM the message will not be deleted, but instead the subject line will be rewritten to include a message marking it as SPAM.  This is handy to prevent users from losing important messages to false positives. This also allows you to set a lower score threshold.

To do this first look for the line:

# report_safe 1

Uncomment this line by removing the “#” character and then change the “1″ to “0″ (no quotes).

The next step is to uncomment the line:

# rewrite_header Subject *****SPAM*****

Now you can alter the “*****SPAM*****” section of this line to reflect what you’d prefer it to say. Just make sure it is clear to your users that a message with this rewritten subject line is most likely SPAM.

Now restart the Spamassassin daemon with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart

Configure Postfix

The last step is to set up Postfix to use Spamassassin. To do this open up the file /etc/postfix/master.cf and look for the line:

smtp     inet    n   –   –   –   –   smtpd

You need to alter this line to look like:

smtp      inet   n   -   -   -   -   smtpd -o content_filter=spamassassin

Finally, at the end of this file add the following:

spamassassin
unix - n n - - pipe
flags=R
user=spamd
argv=/usr/bin/spamc
-e /usr/sbin/sendmail
-oi -f ${sender} ${recipient}

Now all you need to do is restart Postfix with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Your mail server should now be scoring incoming message as SPAM or HAM.

Final thoughts

The mail server is a tricky beast. You have to ensure that users are getting their mail, but you have to make sure they aren’t receive SPAM or viruses. After completing this series of articles, you should have a pretty solid server running that will send out mail that is safe for users eyes.