Customer Reviews

Removing the Spam: E-mail Processing and Filtering (Addison-Wesley Networking Basics Series)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here is a book worthy of the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." In this case, you may judge this book to address the general topic of email spam, processing and filtering. Not so. This books focuses on the unix tools, sendmail and procmail. If you are looking for a book to guide you through the process of installing and configuring sendmail and procmail, this may be the book you're looking for. I couldn't tell you because I quit reading at that point. But, if you are looking for a general source on email spam and techniques for reducing or eliminating it, look elsewhere. A better title for this book would have been, "Sendmail and Procmail: Installation and Configuration."

This is really a book about setting up some Unix mail tools: sendmail, procmail, majordomo, and smartlist, with modest amounts of spam fighting advice included. Unfortunately, a lot of the spam fighting advice is wrong, and many of the procmail examples have editing errors that keep them from doing what they are supposed to do.

In a corrected edition, this could be a useful book, but as it stands, you're better off with the O'Reilly Sendmail book and the on-line documentation for the various packages.

I bought this book for the procmail chapter (Chapter 3) but the other chapters, on sendmail and mailing lists, are also very useful. There is also an enlightening chapter on the history of email. The bulk of the book is a collection clear recipes along with explanatory text, in a practical how-to-get-tasks-done approach. In contrast to other encyclopedic books (in the case of sendmail) or disorganized masses of inconsistent web information (in the case of mailing lists), this book cuts to the chase and gives the key information you need.

Unfortunately, however, in the chapter I needed most (and the chapter I have scrutinized most), I found there are serious flaws. For example, the first two procmail recipes given under 3.5.2 on page 102 resulted in several days worth of my email getting deleted; they simply do not work as described on my system; when I removed these two recipes my email again worked fine.

If you are going to buy this book, wait for the author to put up an errata page, and then be sure to check that page before relying on the recipes in the book. In the meantime I still think the book has its merits since it explains things clearly.

"Removing the Spam" is an excellent book that deals with mail administration in a unix environment. The book is concise and packs a great deal of information in its pages.

The target audience of the book should be beginning and intermediate mail administrators, and the book does a good job of reaching this audience. The first chapter is a well-rounded introduction to mail systems and administration, and how spam is a thorn in the side of a successful mail operation. The books final three chapters deal with sendmail, procmail, and mailing list systems such as majordomo.

"Removing the Spam" is more of a general mail administration title than a book that focuses purely on spam -- although by following the guidelines and suggestions in the book, one will set up a good mail operation with a minimum of spam.

I really liked this book. It is well organized and easy to use. There isn't a lot of hype about SPAM, just the essentials and exactly what you can do about it! If you have to deal with EMAIL get this book.

This is an excellent reference book for system administrators. I was able to set up a mailing list using the cook book instructions in a matter of minutes. I was also able to install my initial SPAM filtering using the instructions in the procmail chapter and had it up and running with little effor. Geoff is to be commended for writing a book the makes these things simple to do!!!

Good coverage of sendmail, procmail, mailing lists for beginners to email filtering. It's short enough to be read and it contains "links" to more information.

This is a very complete discussion of the infrastructure of email, well-suited to anyone trying to understand enough to be able to filter out Spam.

Mulligan knows his material well. The technological grounding is impressive. I did not catch him in a single error in the entire book. He explains clearly and illustrates amply. With this book, a system administrator could follow the step-by-step examples and implement anti-spam measures.

This book is easy to understand by the new listserver admin. It provides information sources throughout that are very useful. I am not familiar with the unix type platforms, and yet this book helped me wade through the plethora of pitfalls and find the answers. A real headache saver