The gentle readers processing their email on a Unix-system, or
getting their email through a Unix-based system, might be interested
in the following information.


Foiling Spam with an Email Password System
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/spamfoil.html
Last-Modified: Wed 7-Jan-2004 22:47

1. An Email Password System

2. Further useful links about spam

3. Comments and Questions about Timo's Method


Timo's procmail tips and recipes
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/proctips.html
Last-Modified: Mon 29-Dec-2003 16:19

1. I want to filter my email automatically. How do I get started
with procmail?

2. Building a testbench. How can I test individual procmail
recipes?

3. I know how to make "and" rules in procmail recipes, but how do I
make "or" rules?

4. How can one perform multiple shell commands on the action line?

5. How can I find out what the subject of a posting is?

6. How do I get a copy of the headers of all the incoming email
into a separate file?

7. Would you give some further hints for spam foiling recipes?

8. I have limited disk space. How can I truncate long messages?

9. How can I quickly test if my rules with regular expressions
match?

10. How can I detect if the email comes, say, from the .com domain?

11. What alternatives do I have to detect a sender all through the
various header-fields?

12. How can I extract a valid address from the Reply-To field?

13. How can I extract the address of the sender's postmaster?

14. How can I weed out an inordinately long recipient list?

15. What is this procmail scoring? How can I utilize it?

16. How can I test if the subject is empty or if the subject field
is missing altogether?

17. How can I modify the "To:" field of the email I received?

18. I have a long list of spammers in a separate file. How can I
utilize it?

19. How do I forward certain messages that I get, and preserve
myself a copy?

20. How do I forward certain messages to two different addresses?

21. How do I automatically return certain email messages?

22. My address has changed. How do I forward a copy to myself and
tell the sender?

23. How can I set variable values based on the text in the body of
the email message?

24. How can I insert some token text in front of the body of
incoming email?

25. Do you have any useful tips for regular expression matching?

26. How can I test if two procmail variables have the same contents?

27. I am having difficulties with "<". How does one match it?

28. How can I insert identification text to the beginning of the
subject line?

29. I tried out your tips, but some of them failed on my system.
What next?

30. Is there a cure for the echo and grep blues?

31. How do I know which of my many procmail recipes has been
enacted?

32. How can I detect Korean, Cyrillic, or Chinese to avoid such
frequent spam?

33. How can I change the subject line and include part of the message
body to it?

34. How can I remove the signature from the incoming email?

35. What unix manuals relating to procmail should I get?

36. Is it possible to use procmail to call the vacation program?

37. How can I avoid duplicate messages sent in rapid succession?

38. How can I skip logging a certain, matched recipe?

39. Could you please solve for me this procmail problem of mine?

40. I liked this material. Do you have anything else on programming?

41. Exercises

42. Acknowledgements for useful advice and/or feedback

All the best, Timo

--
Prof. Timo Salmi ftp & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance  ; university of Vaasa
mailto:ts@uwasa.fi <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/>  ; FIN-65101,  Finland
Digital photos collection at http://www.uwasa.fi/ktt/lasktoim/photo/

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In <ts20040203031200.23017@loisto.uwasa.fi>, on 02/03/2004
at 05:12 AM, ts@UWasa.Fi (Timo Salmi) said:

>21. How do I automatically return certain email messages?

You can't. All that you can do is to forward it to an address
extracted from the envelope or header. If that address is forged, then
you wind up spamming a third party.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

Unsolicited bulk E-mail will be subject to legal action.  I reserve
the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.

Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do
not reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 09:58:20 -0500, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.or
g.invalid> wrote:
>

My little script tells me that you still have that illegal sig, so I won't
be reading anymore of your post here.

Do you still threaten to sue anyone that sends you spam?

And let me guess: You still have never sued anyone and you still get plenty

of spam.

Go away, you XXXXing idiot scofflaw.

(the rest deleted unseen)


AC
--
ed(1)
25K of troll-control
The perfect Usenet editor/pager

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote:
>    at 05:12 AM, ts@UWasa.Fi (Timo Salmi) said:
 

> You can't. All that you can do is to forward it to an address
> extracted from the envelope or header. If that address is forged, then
> you wind up spamming a third party.

That is non-information. A truims that is just a twist of the
strawman strategy.

All the best, Timo

--
Prof. Timo Salmi ftp & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance  ; university of Vaasa
mailto:ts@uwasa.fi <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/>  ; FIN-65101,  Finland
Timo's  procmail tips at  http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/info/proctips.html

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In <c0134o$t5q@poiju.uwasa.fi>, on 02/07/2004
at 12:06 AM, ts@UWasa.Fi (Timo Salmi) said:

>That is non-information.

Not at all. Your question 21 promises more than it can deliver, and
pointing that fact out is information. The fact that the correction is
a truism makes your error even less excusable. Worse, your answer to
your question 21 has the same error. It does not return spam to the
sender, but rather assists the spammer in victimizing additional
recipients. In an era when the majority of spam has bogus envelope and
headier data, your recipe can only be considered to be abuse.
Certainly if someone "returned" to me a message that I hadn't sent, I
would report it as spam.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT

Unsolicited bulk E-mail will be subject to legal action.  I reserve
the right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail.

Reply to domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me.  Do
not reply to spamtrap@library.lspace.org

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:

> In <c0134o$t5q@poiju.uwasa.fi>, on 02/07/2004
>    at 12:06 AM, ts@UWasa.Fi (Timo Salmi) said:
> 
>
> Not at all. Your question 21 promises more than it can deliver, and
> pointing that fact out is information. The fact that the correction is a
> truism makes your error even less excusable. Worse, your answer to your
> question 21 has the same error. It does not return spam to the sender,
> but rather assists the spammer in victimizing additional recipients. In
> an era when the majority of spam has bogus envelope and headier data,
> your recipe can only be considered to be abuse. Certainly if someone
> "returned" to me a message that I hadn't sent, I would report it as spam.

Agreed entirely. Quite apart from the above, it also is a waste of space &
time to process the generated mail, whether or not it hits a (let alone
*the*) valid recipient.

I also am interested in knowing what Timo's magic recipe for reliably
returning mails to their (real) senders might be.

~Tim
--
18:33:12 up 67 days, 21:47,  2 users,  load average: 0.35, 0.49, 0.34
piglet@stirfried.vegetable.org.uk |Can you tell me how to get,
http://spodzone.org.uk/cesspit/   |How to get to Sesame Street?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]