} According to Eric Youngdale:
} >
} > > there -- know if there exists within sendmail a facility to
} > > screen out _for_ _me_(e.g. alan) domains/sites from which I don't
} > > want E-mail and delete or bounce such mail before it hits
} > > /var/spool/mail/alan? Such a capability would IMHO give us the
} > > best of all possible worlds: 99% of us would (have our sysops)
} > > configure sendmail to reject posts from e.g. interramp.com,
} > > and those who wanted it could have it. And the offenders would
} > > soon learn that most of the world was shutting them out.
} >
} > Would there be one central list that is maintained by
} > the system administrator, or would each user have to maintain their own list
} > of spam sites?
On an individual basis this can be done by the existing filter stuff.
The filters cannot at present bounce things - although I think this is
probably a good thing (tm).
} My concept is a central data-base: containing entries like
} (ericy: make.money.com awful.stuff.com)
} (alan: interramp.com awful.stuff.com)
} and the mail program -- perhaps sendmail, perhaps before -- would check
} this db and throw away mail that came from such sites, for each of the
} users. It would be smart to have the users be able to control their own
} entry, but not, of course, others.
You could probably get the effect of this with the overall system
filtering that philip is working on.
} If this piece of useful SW were on all the major ISPs -- aol, compuserve,
} netcom, clark, panix, etc -- and were well publicized, spamming through
} E-mail would fairly quickly dry up, I believe.
No, it would have no effect whatsoever. The people creating the stuff
would just switch to a different sender address - it doesn't need to be
valid, but if you do only allow valid sender addresses throught then the
spammers use forged valid addresses - ie bill.gates@??? etc.
Having said that I do some filtering based on sender address at present -
but it only really works at all because people don't know exactly what I
am doing. The main filtering is done on number of recipients/message size
combination.
I don't think there is a technical solution to this at present. End to
end signatures will help. People applying baseball bats or legal writs to
the perpetrators does have a reasonable effect. I am wondering about the
legality of publishing the home address and phone number of spammers -
10000 annoyed people phoning them up at night might have an effect!
Nigel.
--
[ Nigel.Metheringham@??? - Unix Applications Engineer ]
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[[[ Welcome to Grace, arrived 01:37 BST, 18 Sept 1996, 5lb 15oz ]]]
