[MLUG] email blocking software - recommendations?

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007, Hargus, Diana wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, what is the definition of spam?

In practice, it can be a very complex set of rules.  For me, it is 
unsolicited and untargetted messages.  By untargetted I mean that the 
sender knows nothing whatsoever about me and is just trying to hit as many 
email addresses as possible.  Other kinds of advertisements are acceptable 
to me and there are so few of them that they aren't a bother.


> I just wish I knew how to code so I could make a mail client that would 
> be by invitation only (biomail?) and not allow anything but the 
> whitelist through without the keycode.  Would this be a server side app?

Sounds like something procmail could do handily.  I don't know why you'd 
want a keycode.  If I were to do this, I would set up a web page that 
would allow people to add their address to my no-block list.  Then, if 
someone not on the list were to send me a message, they would get a reply 
telling them they must be on the no-block list and there is a web page 
where they can add their name to the list.  This should probably include a 
captcha feature of some kind, but that might not be needed because most 
spammers work with such vast quantities of addresses, they'd probably just 
give up.  Another neat way to deal with this would be to have a crontab 
check the list every hour or so to see if it has grown, when it finds that 
a new address has been added, it could search the recent blocked messages 
for that address in the "From" field and deliver them to the normal inbox.

I might want to try this.  Have any of you guys done it, or something like 
it, using procmail or anything else on Linux?

Mike

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