From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Jul 24 23:12:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA16593 for chat-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:12:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from foo.primenet.com (ip219.sjc.primenet.com [206.165.96.219]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id XAA16584 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:12:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from bkogawa@localhost) by foo.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.6.12) id XAA00554; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:16:43 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 23:16:43 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199707250616.XAA00554@foo.primenet.com> To: Anthony.Kimball@East.Sun.COM Subject: Re: (over)zealous mail bouncing Newsgroups: localhost.freebsd.chat References: <199707241601.LAA03086@compound.east.sun.com> <199707242035.PAA03874@compound.east.sun.com> From: "Bryan K. Ogawa" Cc: gpalmer@orion.webspan.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #1 (NOV) Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In localhost.freebsd.chat you write: >Quoth Gary Palmer on Thu, 24 July: >So far, the only *effective* defense I have seen proposed is killing >mail from well-specified originators. I really don't object to the >MAIL FROM: filtering, as described on 'current' recently, but I do >question its effectiveness. Improving the quality and general >availability of the originator filters would be a positive benefit. >But any originator filter than drops even one non-spam mail message >is *broken*. Email is *important*. (That's *why* spam is so evil.) One simple defense which will *generally* corral unsolicited mass email is to use a procmail filter which sets aside (*don't bounce or trash*) mail which does not have your email address on the From:, Cc:, etc. lines, and tosses it in your least favorite mailbox. Use rules with higher precedence to catch all of that mailing list mail and put it somewhere appropriate. This will catch mail from most mailing lists (so don't bounce it, in case the headers suddenly change!), as well as Bcc:'ed mail, but it also catches >90% of the unsolicited mass email I get. If you check this and clean it out once every few days, it may give you a feeling of control (since you visit the spam when you feel like it, instead of it visiting you when it feels like it). You'll also notice that these messages tend to be easy to spot just from subject lines. -- bryan k ogawa http://www.primenet.com/~bkogawa/