On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 02:19:52PM +1100, Brett Randall wrote:
>is addressed to my e-mail address (in the To: header), so it isn't a
>normal, cheap one that simply connects to many many servers, it
Here's what I've done to combat unsolicited commercial e-mail:
I don't give out my real address. Pretty much ny time I give out an
address (submit it on a form, give it to a company I'm dealing with,
put it on a web-page or mail list), I use a one-time address. Like,
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]". If I'm signing up at the foobar.com web site,
I'll use "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". You get the idea. Particularly
useful on Usenet where I use "jafo-200010" (year-month) so I can
gradually expire them as the UCE picks up.
I bitch and moan and boycott companies that I do business with who
sell or otherwise provide my address to others (remember, I can tell
because of the above).
I used the badrcptto patch so that in addition to rejecting on the envelope
from address, I can do the same with the to. I used to use a bounce, but
the UCE almost always had invalid return addresses so I just started
refusing e-mail for it.
I set up a filter for my inbox which sorts out things based on recpieint,
does a MAPS lookup as it's being put in my mail folder, and other fairly
complex rules, and sorts them out. See ftp.tummy.com:/pub/tummy/pyspam
for the code as it is after a week of poking.
All this has reduced the UCE going in to my main box to about 2 messages per
day. This is on an address I've had for a decade, mind you, and I have in
the past gotten 10 or more UCE messages per day.
I did an evaluation of a SMTP filter program last weekend, and while it
was thorough, I didn't like it. Cost around $5k per machine, and just
was fairly inflexable. I mean, if you're charging those rates, you're
selling to large customers (ISPs, businesses, etc). The problem is that
this was an all or nothing, it had no ability to tune it on a user-by-user
basis. I can just hear the users calling in "I'm waiting for an imporant
e-mail, but it's getting bounced. FIX IT!"
Sean
--
"I feel so insignificant... Like people are laughing at me."
"You--You ARE a clown..." -- Bob Newhart
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python
