Anti spam solutions

JoeHill joehill-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org
Fri Oct 10 10:58:50 UTC 2003


On Thu, 9 Oct 2003 23:47:20 -0400 (EDT)
"Chris F.A. Johnson" <c.f.a.johnson-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> uttered:

> > Could your script be called by fetchmail the same way Mailfilter is
> > *at the same time*?
> 
>      The script replaces both fetchmail (or get-mail, in my case) and
>      mailfilter. Or either one.

>From what I've seen, it uses the same kind of config file as Mailfilter
(duh, they're both using RegExp...), so it wouldn't be much to simply
copy and paste my rules from Mailfilter over.

>      So I was going to say no, but as I think about it, it could in
>      fact be called by fetchmail: just set retrieve=0 in the config
>      file so that it doesn't download the mail itself.

Ya, I saw that, good thinkin'.

How is it on speed, though? Fetchmail and Mailfilter work very quickly
and with relatively low overhead. A bash script would by definition be
slower, no?

> > or would I need to call it seperately, say as a cron job
> > or something?
> 
>      I set up a new e-mail account a few days ago; I used it yesterday
>      for the first time to post some messages to newsgroups. Within a
>      couple of hours, that account received 4 copies of the SWEN
>      virus!

I don't doubt it. Like I say, I haven't been "plagued" by the onslaught
of this latest virus as much as some, but I'm definitely going to play
with this. I might try as a cron job, but my only concern there I
guess is that it might "interfere" with Fetchmail and Mailfilter
doing their thang. 

In any case, it's another tool in the arsenal against spam. So far
Mailfilter has caught *most* of the attempts and bopped them right off
my POP server, but that's cuz I use very restrictive rules. Basically,
if mail is not coming from a known source, it has very little chance of
getting through. It would have to be plain text, from a mailer other
than Outhouse, and addressed to me specifically, and even then
mention.sympatico.ca no more than 2 times.

Thanks!
-- 
JoeHill
Registered Linux user #282046
Homepage: www.orderinchaos.org
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