"Jude DaShiell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Okay, how many of your good friends send you html formatted messages? I > have no friends who do that. However every piece of spam that I get either > has <html> or <HTML> in the body of the message. I use nettamer and am a > registered user of killfile by Tom Burlay and those two problems only need > two lines in the killfile.dat file.
While I don't go so far as Jude in killing all HTML mail, I do use some tools under Linux that take things like that into consideration. I like to use the procmail package, together with a ruleset called "SpamBouncer". I have procmail sort mail on receipt (before I fire up my client) according to mailing list. As I mentioned to the Day-I, the majority of mailing lists I'm on (this one included) require a validation process much like the BBSen of old, and are as good as spam-free. I've found it simplest to sort mail out by To: address and file "clean" mailing lists into separate folders. After that, I do a bit of special handling then pass everything else (any mail addressed to identities I use in public) to the SpamBouncer script. SpamBouncer checks for things like HTML content, spam buzzwords and freemail origination to "score" each message. Those that pass a threshold go into the Spam folder, though I could simply have them deleted without comment. It's to the point that I have a few messages in my inbox that are really to me, a hundred or so mailing list messages sorted out so I can review them at my leisure, and a bundle of spams that I skim in case there's a false hit, then blast the rest. It's not perfect, but it makes e-mail manageable for me. There are other procmail scripts (and replacements) that do things like "defang" or strip HTML, and mime-encoded attachments, freeing one from worrying about the latest mail client vulnerabilities. These can all be as complilcated as you want, but with a bit of research and a desire to win out over spam, tools are available for most operating systems to avoid sorting through dozens or hundreds of e-mails daily to find legitimate content. For those who like to go a bit further and run their own mail servers, there are tools that actually can help fight spam at its source. My favorite is the "teergrube" (tarpit -- see http://www.iks-jena.de/mitarb/lutz/usenet/teergrube.en.html) that slows down spammers so that their throughput diminishes. Hopefully enough conscientious folks will take up this practice so that the free ride spammers enjoy will become tougher to find. I find you have to take the good with the bad, and the benefit of being out to send e-mail world-wide cheaply and quickly makes the inconvenience worth putting up with, especially when productivity-enhancing tools such as these are readily available, and free of cost. All that is asked is a bit of my time learning to understand and use them properly. Quite the bargain. - Bob To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
