[TriLUG] Postfix v QMail ?

[Alan Porter]

Jason> One thing I like about qmail is the "dash alias" feature.
Jason> If your email address is joe at foo.com, qmail gives you a
Jason> wildcard alias of joe-*@foo.com.

Christopher> That's an interesting way to identify spam, but
Christopher> does it help you reduce the spam at all?


There is a pretty neat package called "TMDA" or "Tagged Mail
Delivery Agent" which uses the dash alias feature of qmail and
postfix to manage whitelists of email senders.

The first time someone sends you an email, TMDA fires off an
autoreply to them, from an address like joe-serialnumber at foo.com.
The autoreply says something like this:

   I get a lot of spam.  You sent me an email.  To distinguish
   yourself from a spambot, please reply to this message.  After
   doing that, you will be added to my personal list of
   legitimate email senders.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

>From what I hear from people that run TMDA, they receive very
little spam... mainly because they only accept mail from a
whitelist.  It's a little hassle for first-time senders, and
it probably not appropriate for people who do lots of one-off
email transactions (like ebay sellers).  But for normal personal
mail, it does a good job.

See http://tmda.net for more info.


Alan



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