---
title: Anti-spam
url: 'https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam'
markdown: 'https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam.md'
date: '2026-09-22'
description: 'The anti-spam portion of Warden is powered by Spamassassin®. Spamassassin is the #1 Open Source anti-spam platform giving system administrators a filter to classify email and block spam. It uses a robust scoring framework and plug-ins to integrate a wide range of advanced heuristic and statistical …'
taxonomy:
  category:
    - docs
  tag:
    - spamassassin
---

[](#)  [ Basics ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/)     [ User Guide ](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide)      Anti-spam    

# Anti-spam

The anti-spam portion of Warden is powered by Spamassassin®. Spamassassin is the #1 Open Source anti-spam platform giving system administrators a filter to classify email and block spam.

It uses a robust scoring framework and plug-ins to integrate a wide range of advanced heuristic and statistical analysis tests on email headers and body text including text analysis, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases.

## Features

- Wide-spectrum: SpamAssassin uses a wide variety of local and network tests to identify spam signatures. This makes it harder for spammers to identify one aspect which they can craft their messages to work around.
- Easy to extend: Anti-spam tests and configuration are stored in plain text, making it easy to configure and add new rules.
- Flexible: SpamAssassin encapsulates its logic in a well-designed, abstract API so it can be integrated anywhere in the email stream.
- Easy Configuration: SpamAssassin requires very little configuration; you do not need to continually update it with details of your mail accounts, mailing list memberships, etc. Once classified, site and user-specific policies can then be applied against spam. Policies can be applied on both mail servers and later using the user's own mail user-agent application.

## SPAM vs HAM

**SPAM** - Spam, also known as junk email, is a type of electronic spam where unsolicited messages are sent by email.
**HAM** - Ham is e-mail that is not Spam. In other words, "non-spam", or "good mail". It should be considered a shorter, snappier synonym for "non-spam".

## Restarting Spamassassin

> > > > > The SpamAssassin daemon should never be started because it is never used with Amavis. It would be a waste of resources to have it running. Warden will try to disable the spamassassin daemon on installation.

## Updating Rules

You can manually run the sa-update command to update your SpamAssassin rules.

```
/usr/bin/sa-update
```

Rules are stored in the directory `/var/lib/spamassassin`.

## Rules QA

You can view statistics about all the SpamAssassin rules online at <https://ruleqa.spamassassin.org/>

## Related Files

| File | Description |
|---|---|
| `/etc/mail/spamassassin/local.cf` | Configuration file for spamassassin |

## Related Pages

- [Anti-spam Plugins](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins "Anti-spam Plugins")

 [](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins)

---

## Navigation

- Parent: [User Guide](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide.md)
- Previous: [Content Filter](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/content-filter.md)
- Next: [Anti-spam Plugins](https://docs.danami.com/warden/user-guide/antispam-plugins.md)