SPAMASSASSIN(1p)

📦

version 4.0.2+svn1935691 · 9 versions

4.0.2+svn1935691 · ubuntu stonking (latest)
4.0.2 · arch rolling
4.0.2~rc2 · ubuntu questing
3.4.6 · ubuntu jammy
3.4.6 · ubuntu jammy
4.0.0 · ubuntu noble
4.0.1 · debian bookworm
4.0.2 · ubuntu resolute
4.0.1 · debian trixie

💖 spamassassin — the manual, but make it make sense 💖

okay bestie, so this is the SPAMASSASSIN(1p) page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation, and I'm gonna walk you through it like we're texting at 2am. grab a boba, we're doing this. 🧋✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

spamassassin — the extensible email filter that sniffs out spam, no cap 🕵️♀️💅

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

SpamAssassin is an intelligent email filter that runs a whole diverse range of tests to identify unsolicited bulk email — aka "spam", the thing we all hate. 😤

It applies those tests to email headers and content to classify messages using advanced statistical methods. and like… it's modular, bestie. the architecture lets other technologies get yeeted at spam real quick, and the whole thing is designed for easy integration into basically any email system. it's giving versatility. it ate. 🔥

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so for ease of access, the SpamAssassin manual got chopped up into several sections. if you're reading these straight through for the first time, the suggested order will tend to reduce the number of forward references. thoughtful, honestly. 🫶

there's also extensive additional documentation for SpamAssassin available, primarily on the SpamAssassin web site and wiki.

and yes, you should be able to view SpamAssassin's documentation with your man(1) program or perldoc(1). iconic tools. 📖

🌈 OVERVIEW

spamassassin — SpamAssassin overview (this section)

🌈 CONFIGURATION

Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf — SpamAssassin configuration files

🌈 USAGE

spamassassin-run — the "spamassassin" front-end filtering script
sa-learn — train SpamAssassin's Bayesian classifier
spamc — client for spamd (faster than spamassassin)
spamd — spamassassin server (needed by spamc)

🌈 DEFAULT PLUGINS

like, the whole starting lineup. respect them. 👑

Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ARC
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AskDNS
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::AutoLearnThreshold
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Bayes
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::BodyEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Check
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DKIM
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DMARC
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::DNSEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::FreeMail
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HTMLEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HTTPSMismatch
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HashBL
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::HeaderEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ImageInfo
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::MIMEEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::MIMEHeader
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Pyzor
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::Razor2
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::RelayEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::ReplaceTags
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SpamCop
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDNSBL
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDetail
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::VBounce
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::WLBLEval
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::WelcomeListSubject

🦋 WEB SITES 🦋

SpamAssassin web site: https://spamassassin.apache.org/
Wiki-based documentation: https://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/

bookmark them, bestie. iykyk. 🔖

💌 USER MAILING LIST 💌

there's a users mailing list, and fr fr it's full of experienced users who are often able to help and provide tips and advice. the subscription instructions live on the SpamAssassin web site. go make friends. 🫂

🎀 CONFIGURATION FILES 🎀

the SpamAssassin rule base, text templates, and rule description text all get loaded from configuration files. here's the tea:

Default configuration data is loaded from the first existing directory in:

/var/lib/spamassassin/4.000003
/usr/share/spamassassin
/usr/share/spamassassin
/usr/local/share/spamassassin
/usr/share/spamassassin

Site-specific configuration data is used to override any values which had already been set. this one loads from /etc/spamassassin.

from those directories, SpamAssassin will first read files ending in .pre in lexical order, and then it will read files ending in .cf in lexical order (most files begin with two numbers to make the sorting order obvious — cute, right?).

in other words, it reads init.pre first, then 10_default_prefs.cf before 50_scores.cf, and 20_body_tests.cf before 20_head_tests.cf. options in later files will override earlier files. hierarchy. 💅

Individual user preferences are loaded from the location specified on the spamassassin, sa-learn, or spamd command line (see respective manual page for details — i'm not doing their homework for them). if the location is not specified, ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs is used if it exists. SpamAssassin will create that file if it does not already exist, using user_prefs.template as a template. that template file will be looked for in:

/etc/spamassassin
/usr/etc/mail/spamassassin
/usr/share/spamassassin
/etc/spamassassin
/etc/mail/spamassassin
/usr/local/share/spamassassin
/usr/share/spamassassin

🔥 TAGGING 🔥

the next two sections detail the default tagging and markup that takes place for messages when running spamassassin or spamc with spamd in the default configuration.

⚠️ Note: before header modification and addition, all headers beginning with X-Spam- are removed to prevent spammer mischief and also to avoid potential problems caused by prior invocations of SpamAssassin. messy exes stay in the past, bestie. 🚫

💀 TAGGING FOR SPAM MAILS 💀

by default, all messages with a calculated score of 5.0 or higher are tagged as spam.

if an incoming message is tagged as spam, instead of modifying the original message, SpamAssassin will create a new report message and attach the original message as a message/rfc822 MIME part (ensuring the original message is completely preserved and easier to recover). it's giving responsible. 🫶

the new report message inherits the following headers (if they are present) from the original spam message:

From: header
To: header
Cc: header
Subject: header
Date: header
Message-ID: header

the above headers can be modified if the relevant rewrite_header option is given (see Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf for more information).

by default these message headers are added to spam:

X-Spam-Flag: header — set to "YES".

the headers that added are fully configurable via the add_header option (see Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf for more information).

spam mail body text — the SpamAssassin report is added to top of the mail message body, if the message is marked as spam.

💜 DEFAULT TAGGING FOR ALL MAILS 💜

these headers get added to all messages, both spam and ham (non-spam). everyone gets a sticker. 🌟

X-Spam-Checker-Version: header — the version and subversion of SpamAssassin and the host where SpamAssassin was run.
X-Spam-Level: header — a series of "*" characters where each one represents a full score point.
X-Spam-Status: header — a string, "(Yes|No), score=nn required=nn tests=xxx,xxx autolearn=(ham|spam|no|unavailable|failed)" is set in this header to reflect the filter status. for the first word, "Yes" means spam and "No" means ham (non-spam).

the headers that added are fully configurable via the add_header option (see Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf for more information).

🌈 INSTALLATION 🌈

the spamassassin command is part of the Mail::SpamAssassin Perl module. install this as a normal Perl module, using perl -MCPAN -e shell, or by hand. your call, main character. 💅

⚠️ hmm okay important: it is not possible to use the PERL5LIB environment variable to affect where SpamAssassin finds its perl modules, due to limitations imposed by perl's taint security checks. so don't try it, bestie, it's not gonna go how you want. 😭

for further details on how to install, please read the INSTALL file from the SpamAssassin distribution.

👑 DEVELOPER DOCUMENTATION 👑

for the dev girlies (gender neutral) who want to go deep:

Mail::SpamAssassin — Spam detector and markup engine
Mail::SpamAssassin::ArchiveIterator — find and process messages one at a time
Mail::SpamAssassin::AutoWelcomelist — auto-welcomelist handler for SpamAssassin
Mail::SpamAssassin::Bayes — determine spammishness using a Bayesian classifier
Mail::SpamAssassin::BayesStore — Bayesian Storage Module
Mail::SpamAssassin::BayesStore::SQL — SQL Bayesian Storage Module Implementation
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf::LDAP — load SpamAssassin scores from LDAP database
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf::Parser — parse SpamAssassin configuration
Mail::SpamAssassin::Conf::SQL — load SpamAssassin scores from SQL database
Mail::SpamAssassin::Message — decode, render, and hold an RFC-2822 message
Mail::SpamAssassin::Message::Metadata — extract metadata from a message
Mail::SpamAssassin::Message::Node — decode, render, and make available MIME message parts
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgLearner — per-message status (spam or not-spam)
Mail::SpamAssassin::PerMsgStatus — per-message status (spam or not-spam)
Mail::SpamAssassin::PersistentAddrList — persistent address list base class
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin — SpamAssassin plugin base class
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::RelayCountry — add message metadata indicating the country code of each relay
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::SPF — perform SPF verification tests
Mail::SpamAssassin::Plugin::URIDNSBL — look up URLs against DNS blocklists
Mail::SpamAssassin::SQLBasedAddrList — SpamAssassin SQL Based Auto Welcomelist

🙈 BUGS 🙈

found one? spill it here: <https://bz.apache.org/SpamAssassin/> — they wanna know, fr fr. 🐛

🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

The SpamAssassin(tm) Project <https://spamassassin.apache.org/>

📜 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 📜

SpamAssassin is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, as described in the file LICENSE included with the distribution.

and that's the whole page bestie, we did it!! 🎉✨ this whole thing came to you via perl v5.40.1, dated 2026-07-23 — so yeah, SPAMASSASSIN(1p), that's the vibe. go filter some spam, you absolute icon. 💖🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from

ubuntu stonking: spamassassin 4.0.2+svn1935691-1build1
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-11-03: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms