Some tima ago I asked a question about how to construct a
blacklist of senders with spamassassin. However the replies
veered off to Exim4. I would like to to return to my question.
How do I enable spamassassin to use a black list?

In the manual for apache I read

- /usr/share/spamassassin/user_prefs.template:

Distributed default user preferences. Do not modify this, as it
is overwritten when you upgrade.

- /etc/mail/spamassassin/user_prefs.template:

Default user preferences, for system admins to create, modify, and
set defaults for users' preferences files. Takes precedence over
the above prefs file, if it exists.

Do not put system-wide settings in here; put them in a file in the
"/etc/mail/spamassassin" directory ending in ".cf". This file is
just a template, which will be copied to a user's home directory
for them to change.

...

Unless you're using spamd, there is no difference in
interpretation between the rules file and the preferences file,
so users can add new rules for their own use in the
"~/.spamassassin/user_prefs" file, if they like. (spamd
disables this for security and increased speed.)

I did as suggested and copied the template to create
~/.spanassassin/ user_prefs. The ~/.Spamassassin directory is
owned by me and has a 755 permission. The user_prefs file in that
directory is also owned by me and has a 644 permission. I
appended to the user_prefs file a list of addresses I would like
to blacklist. Theese lines are in the form

    blacklist_from sender@???

I am in the debian-spamd:x:120 group. Is this necessary?

In case spamassassin needs restarting I restarted spamd. Is this
necessary?

All this has no effect. How do I get spamd to use the user_prefs
file? Years ago I did it without problem.

--

     Haines Brown