The Auto-WhiteList

In March 2014 (rev 1579980), SpamAssassin introduced the TxRep plugin. The new plugin enhances the functionality of AWL, and works around some of its shortcomings.

Introduction

Tracks scores from messages previously received and adjusts the message score, either by boosting messages from senders who send ham or penalizing senders who have sent spam previously. This not only treats some senders as if they were whitelisted but also treats spammers as if they were blacklisted. Each message from a particular sender adjusts the historical total score which can change them from a spammer if they send non-spam messages. Senders who are considered non-spammers can become treated as spammers if they send messages which appear to be spam.

...

Previous version implementation

• In 3.3, the plugin is not loaded by default.
• In 3.1, it is a plugin, loaded by default in the file v310.pre.
• In 3.0, it is enabled by default and turned off with the configuration setting use_auto_whitelist 0.
• In earlier versions, it is enabled using the -a flag to spamassassin or spamd.
  

Utility

The auto-whitelist database (when using the DB Format backend) can be examined and pruned using the program 'sa-awl'. NOTE: This was incorrectly written as sa-awlUtil in previous documentation.

...

An enhanced version of that utility is available at

http://www.real-world-systems.com/mail/sa-heatu.html http://www.Real-World-Systems.com/mail/sa-heatu.tar

...

Spam Assassin - *H*euristic *E*mail *A*ddress *T*racker Utility
Includes the ability to remove a entries for a single email address.
This is useful when a spammer sends one or more ham messages before sending spam.

Newer version is available at http://truxoft.com/resources/sa-heatu.v4.02.tar.gz Besides other enhancements, it offers the possibility to dump, expire, or delete records by multiple criteria, including regexes. There is no online document describing all the new features, but the command line help and the integrated changelog give detailed information about them (sa-heatu -h resp. sa-heatu --changelog).

...

Discussion

DGerman says: " Notice that I have avoided the use of the string autowhiteList where possible. Even if "we were there first", this it is more than whitelisting."

...