--- Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gary Nunn wrote: > > > > Spammers can certainly be as creative as they can be annoying. > > > > With MailWasher, I am bouncing and deleting an average of 30 messages a > > day, probably twice that on weekends. I am assuming that those weekend > > spammers have real jobs during the week. :-) > > Actually, I get *less* spam on Saturdays and Sundays than during the > week. (I've been keeping a tally for over 3 months now, to check for > trends such as this one.) > > Unfortunately, neither of the outgoing mail servers I use will relay > bounces back to the senders. :( So about all I can do is delete all > the friggin' stuff. But it takes a lot less time than downloading and > deleting. > > > Also, I have noticed that as soon as I register a domain name, two or > > three days later I am getting spam sent to generic names at that domain > > name. I can control that somewhat by turning off the email "catch all", > > but I did get some to the administrative address, which means that they > > are harvesting email addresses from the Whois database. How annoying! > > Yeah. I got a message bounced back to me by some hypervigilant > spam-blocker indicating that our domain had been used for that sort of > thing, which really pisses me off. If the spam-blocking services would > do something like "mail from domain X is invalid unless it goes through > mail server Y, in which case it's legitimate", that would be nice. If > they *are* doing that, then maybe I should contact them and see what we > can do so that *my* legit mail gets through to the people I need it to > get to, while the crap that has nothing to do with us gets killed.
I am working on an even better solution than spam blocking. Well, I say "working on" but at this point it is just an idea I through out last night to a friend or two. Here is the gist: You create a mailpass key. It's a public key which you pass to anyone who you want to actualy -give- your email address to. These people would then simply add your key to their mail tool as your mailpass key. When they send you mail the mailpass key would travel along with the mail. On your end, if the mailpass key was not correct the mail would be dumped into the trash and you would never have to look at it. You can do this today. You simply give everyone you want to send mail to you a string which must allways be placed in the "to" field. Curently you probably get mail with a -to-field that read seomthing like this: "Jan Coffey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> All you need to do is give out your e-mail adress as something like this: "mailpass key" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> That is the whole thing including the quotes, the bit in quotes, and the chevrons. Now in your mail tool create a "filter" or "rule" which moves all incomeing messages that do not contain "mailpass key" without the quotes to the trash, or some extra directory. Maybe if we all did this the spamers would get so few hits they would discontinue the practice. If websites that asked for your e-mail would also ask for a mailpass key then you could have 2 or more keys hich you could give out based on who you were giving the adress to. ===== _________________________________________________ Jan William Coffey _________________________________________________ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l