[TriLUG] alternate ways to reduce spam (was: OT: Google advertising for spammers?)

[Matt Pusateri]

I don't go in to nearly that level of trouble. I run my own mail server with postfix, amavisd, spamassasin, some RBL's and postgrey.  Postgrey and amavis keep most of it away.  I get maybe one spam email a a day at that.  I've never tweaked spamassasin, and I think it's postgrey that does a lot of the hard work, along with the RBL's.  I've been considering trying policy-weightd to see how effective that is.  The amount of spam I get is small enough, that I don't feel the need to try to maintain aliases.  I use my gmail account for all the mailing list related items from FOSS lists.  And I have a throw away yahoo address I use if I ever have someone bug me enough that I have  to give them an address.  Such as when you have to register to download something.  And + is the default separator in postfix

Matt P.


On Aug 31, 2010, at 1:13 PM, Chris Merrill wrote:

> On 8/31/2010 12:52 PM, David M. wrote:
>> Maxwell, I appreciate that you seem to legitimately care that your list was
>> opt-in first.  100% of the spams I got were from people who decided I should
>> be on their list for me.  If only all list creators and users of iContact,
>> constantcontact, etc. services would act in such a way, but unfortunately
>> this is not true and this is why I feel the iContact model stinks.  They
> 
> I'm curious what novel approaches people are using to fight spam?  (beyond the
> traditional e-mail filtering)
> 
> I've been using a system for about 7 years that has almost completely eliminated
> spam from my personal inbox.  It is probably not a novel idea.  The system is
> cumbersome, however.  Perhaps this is an opportunity for somebody.
> 
> I run my own mail server. Every time I must provide an e-mail address (to a website,
> etc.), I create a unique entry in my "aliases" file and record who that alias
> was given to (and when).  When I receive spam on an address, I can then:
> - know EXACTLY who gave out my e-mail address
> - turn off that alias, so future e-mails to that address are rejected by the server
>  (as undeliverable)
> 
> My use of this approach has led me to a few conclusions:
> - it works very well
> - it is mildly cumbersome to use in practice - particularly when I am not in
>  front of my computer.  I _can_ SSH into my mail server via the SSH console on my
>  droid and do this remotely, though it is cumbersome.
> - very, very, very few sites give away their e-mail lists
> - newsgroups and mailing lists are trolled actively by e-mail harvesters
> - it isn't very practical for a business e-mail address, doesn't work at all
>  on business cards, etc.
> 
> I get effectively zero spam in my personal inbox now - maybe 1 message per month,
> usually less than that.
> 
> 
> I've thought occasionally about a way to turn this into a useful (and usable) system
> for others, but have never pursued it.
> 
> 
> 
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