On Fri, Oct 26, 2001 at 05:49:03PM -0700, Will Yardley (dis)graced my inbox with:
> Rob 'Feztaa' Park wrote:
>
> > Hey guys, I've been having this terrible problem with email spam and I
> > was wondering if you guys have similar problems, and if so, what you do
> > about them.
> >
> > Anyway, I keep getting advertisements for really disgusting porn. They
> > all seem to come from different addresses (although they're all from
> > hotmail, and they're all obviously spoofed - replies bounce).
>
> well for your own sanity, i highly recommend a set of procmail filters
> like spambouncer... www.spambouncer.org
Cool, I'll check that out.
> you still need to check your spam folder occasionally, and sometimes
> there will be spam that makes it through or legit / semi legit mail that
> makes it into your spam folder (and it takes a bit of time to get
> configured right).... BUT it does keep a very high percentage of spam
> out of your inbox.
Well, I check my spam folder whenever there's something new in it (which
kinda defeats the purpose of filtering the spam, because I still see
it). That rule I mentioned does kill 100% of the spam from that
particular spammer, and hasn't caught any legit mail at all (yet...), so
I'm thinking of changing the third line to /dev/null :)
> you can also set it up to notify people with 'borderline' mail that
> their mail has been held, and allows them to send you mail by using a
> specific password... and it can send fake 'bounces' back to known
> spammers to try to get you off their lists.
Would that work? I thought most spammers added little "send email here
to unsubscribe" to the bottom of their emails just so they could confirm
that they are actually spamming a real address... In other words, "email
me to let me know I'm doing a good job!"
> > I've spoken with my ISP about this, and they basically said "Hey, not
> > our fault, go away."
> >
> > This is getting really bad. It just keeps coming, and I can't stop it.
> >
> > Does anybody know how I can get these guys shut down?
>
> probably not, but you might use spamcop to report it, or read the
> headers and report the spammer to their ISP. a good amount of spam
> comes from shady isps in other countries, so reporting it isn't always a
> good idea.
Funny thing about the headers is, as far as I can tell from the
hostnames, it's coming from _my_ ISP. But they deny it.
> you should also report them to the netblock owners of their website,
> return email address, DNS providers, etc.
That's the thing, though. The message is _very_ well spoofed. It's hard
to track down. Then again, I'm no expert, so perhaps I should attach a
copy of the headers for you (perhaps I'll do that privately).
> of course some people might suggest doing some research and getting some
> sort of revenge on them, but i wouldn't suggest doing anything like
> that.... :p
I'm generally opposed to breaking the law when I take action here, but
if push comes to shove...
> if you have control over your mail server you might be able to setup
> something to reject the mail before it even enters your server.
Now that's something I don't know much about. I am running a mail server
on my machine, but I don't actually use it for receiving mail - I use
fetchmail to get my mail from my ISP-given email address. As far as I
know, fetchmail just passes it right along to postfix normally, right?
Or does it just drop the mail straight into my spool file? If it's the
former, I might be able to do that...
--
Rob 'Feztaa' Park
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
"Ever notice something? Unix comes with compilers. NT comes with solitaire."
-- Adep
