re: spam filters (was Re: Eudora in the stone age?)
re: spam filters (was Re: Eudora in the stone age?)
- Subject: re: spam filters (was Re: Eudora in the stone age?)
- From: Charles Arthur <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 13:09:27 +0100
On Sun, 6 Apr 2003 21:43:26 -0400, Will Gosney <email@hidden> wrote:
>
On the somewhat same vien, I am still back with OS 8.6 & Eudora 5.1.
Just to delight JD, I'll mention that 3.1.3 runs a lot faster than 5.x in
native Classic. And does pretty much the same things...
>
Does anyone have a good script for filtering spam to the trash or
>
setting up to filter selected messages to the trash using the domain
>
name of the offending emails? I do this manually, but apparently
>
there are new spammers being born 100x a day.
For the benefit of everyone else who seems to think that there is a means
to stop spam via scripts aimed at the domain - don't bother, unless you're
running a DNS server that can check the IP addresses of incoming email,
verify them, and decide on that basis (of the sender) whether to have them.
The From: domains are often fake, and more to the point, they hijack mail
servers all over the world, so you'll find it hard to deny emails based on
the IP of the mailer (parts of which can often be faked too, although part
of it will be correct).
In any email program it's far simpler to have filters which kill Bcc'd
spam. That is, spam where your email does not appear in the To: or Cc:
fields. This kills 95% of spam.
the filters you need are:
1) admit any mail that comes from known sources where you're Bcc'd
(typically mailing lists like Applescript-users; easy, because they always
come from the same source. You could in Eudora create an address book
nickname entry of "mailing lists" and add the "From" of the list as one of
multiple entries, then do an "intersects nickname" test to allow them.
2) create a filter which bins anything, after all your other filters, which
doesn't have your address in the To: or Cc:.
If you want to get fancy and don't have friends or business in the far east
you might like to trash emails coming from .cn, .tw, .kr, .hk etc. Note
that you should leave a space after the ".cn " in the filter so you don't
zap, say, email@hidden or something. But mainly the Far East spammers
stick to the Bcc rule. Some still get through. Annoying but reality is like
that.
I've been writing about spam since 1994, twigged this rule in 1995/6, and
been applying it very succesfully since then. (Thus I tend to laff at
products that cost money and claim they'll catch 95% of spam. How do I know
that's the number? I took all the spam I received in a year and tested this
against it. I too was looking for a domain-zapping method.)
If you're really serious about stopping spam *before* it reaches
your machine, try PostArmor (www.postarmor.com), a Java app that interfaces
with any mail app (POP or IMAP) and is very configurable. It can delete
spam on the server, or block it while showing you the headers so you can
decide to delete or allow it, and tell you what it's done with emails to
you. (I'm not associated, just a paid-up user.)
Charles
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