[AktiviX-discuss] dying under the spam

[Ian Gregory]

On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 01:32:14AM +0000, ana wrote:
> Hi Jono and all,
> 
> I'm not an expert on this but let me "show off" the little I know :)
> 
> On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, jono wrote:
> 
>  
> > But lately, the spam has gotten to an unbelievable level.  
> 
> I too get a fair bit of spam. However - we only see on our inboxes a 
> fraction of the spam that is actually sent to them.

Hi Ana,
Thanks for this email, it is spot on, and something I may have tried
to write if I had more spare time for replying to lists.

My own email comes in to an SMTP server running Exim and
SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin doesn't block anything by default
but it gives it a spam score and a spam flag if the score is
higher than a certain threshhold. The server allows users to
install their own Exim filiter files, and mine basically just
says to reject anything flagged as spam. As you say, that
immediately gets rid of about 90% of email, possibly with a
few false positives. Exim tells the sending server that
the email failed, and why, and that server should inform
the originating user (if it is a legitimate SMTP server).

Once you know that an email has been rejected (and why) you
can either send a modified email or use a web contact form
or the phone to make first contact and then perhaps get them
to add you to a whitelist if that feature is available.

I have never given it much thought, but certainly it must be
possible to configure SpamAssassin on a list server so that
most spam sent to the list is rejected *before* it gets sent
out to the whole list.

I tend to run lists so that only subscribers can post. Sure
the spammers could in theory send spam to the list by spoofing the
email address of a subscriber, but that doesn't seem to
happen right now. So that is another way to keep list spam at
bay. I know you loose a degree of anonymity when you subscribe,
but not much because you can just create a throwaway address
to do so (you only need to reply to it once to verify your
subscription and then discard it). Also, anonymous posting is
not really anonymous anyway because the list server knows your
IP address.

Ian

-- 
Ian Gregory
http://www.zenatode.org.uk/ian/