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Re: 'vacation'
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From:
bill
Date:
November 27, 2001 15:32
Subject:
Re: 'vacation'
Message ID:
15364.8775.885024.957132@komodo.home.wards.net
Although Perl is a great tool for this sort of thing, there are others
as well, most notably Procmail. And there's an excellent filter
system called the Spam Bouncer which consists of a bunch of procmail
scripts which does just what you want. See http://www.spambouncer.org/
for more info.
--Bill.
Scott R. Godin writes:
>has anyone implemented a 'better version' of the vacation program for
>themselves?
>
>I'm particularly interested in 'screening' the bulk-mail type messages
>that list me in their "bcc:" header so that my address does not show up
>in the "from:" or "cc:" address listings, thus preventing
>/usr/bin/vacation from triggering and sending the response. =:P (fat lot
>of good that does me)
>
>I've noticed that near 99% of the spam I receive uses this method to
>mask it from reciept, so typically I filter this with my mailer into a
>dumping ground, but the sheer amount of spam lately (235 items since Nov
>5th) has caused me to form a desire to tackle this more forthrightly and
>aggressively.
>
>Ideally, it should return the offending mail to postmaster@* (where * is
>the supposed 'from' address) to report the abuse, and include a full
>copy of the original message including headers (along with a nice terse
>little message regarding the laws involved). Additionally it would be
>nice if it could forward the spam to my OWN postmaster for additional
>reportage and filtering at their end.
>
>I'm quite unsure how to go about this. I'm loathe to start messing with
>it without some direction, against the possibility of perhaps breaking
>things or doing it VERY wrongly and seriously pissing off my own
>postmaster hehe ;) without some starting point references to work from,
>and I don't have a testbed here to play with, until my friend finishes
>the work on the redhat box he's been tossing together for me in his free
>time. :-)
>
>Can you kind folks offer some pointers to me as to how I can go about
>such a task, and what would be some of the traps and pitfalls to avoid
>(of which I'm quite sure there are many) in the process?
>
>I'm very anxious to get back at these spamming bastards somehow, as this
>intrusion into my personal e-mail is MOST unwelcome, and I've got a
>growing passion to stamp out this *expletive deleted* practice as often
>as I can.
>
>Hitting them where it hurts with *minimal* manual intervention, seems
>the best way. >;D
>
>I've considered also, the possibility of stuffing them in a database,
>and then periodically checking it interactively with the program, and
>triggering 'bounce' type messages to said postmasters on a specific
>basis -- as this way I don't auto-trigger "I'm-annoyed-by-your-spam"
>responses for *legitimate* 'bcc' messages.
>
> something sort of like an
> $ ~/bin/vacation.pl -X (where X will be whatever flag I decide on to
>enter the database processing stage)
>
> You have (n) messages in your holding cell. Proceed? (y/n) _
> <list of from/subject lines, numbered>
> Enter a Selected line number, or 'a' for all. [#/a] _
> <message headers>
> Preview, Accept, Bounce, Delete [p/a/b/d]? _
>(if Preview is selected)
> <message body>
> Accept, Bounce, Delete,
>Mark-this-Entire-Domain-as-SPAM-source-for-all-time-and-bounce-and-report
>-all-instances :D [a/b/d/m]? _m
>
> Domain 'btamail.net.cn' Captured. OK?
> <Return to accept, or enter corrections>: _
>
>(where (A)ccept could possibly add the From address to a list of
>acceptable e-mails that get passed through automatically from then on.
>:-) as well as passing the mail on to my proper inbox, just like a
>\$user in my .forward file would.
>
>this is just a stray shell account, that I retain around on my prior ISP
>for testing purposes, perl-wise, and in case some people still haven't
>upgraded their addressbooks, so delaying the mail a bit won't kill me.
>(particularly considering the volume of spam it's recieving lately) I
>don't even get 1/20th the amount of spam to other accounts I have. :/
>
>With enough pointers, I think I can complete the beastie -- I mean I DO
>have a pretty complete 'vision' of what I want. :-) I just need some
>pointers on how to get there. I'll happily contribute this pup to the
>CPAN scripts archive if I can get it working exactly the way I want it
>to. I'm SURE some of you could find a use for it. ;)
>
>Your thoughts and contemplations are anticipated with great desire and
>gleeful hand-rubbings and evil-grinning eyebrow-wagglings to "Make it
>so."
>
>If stuff like this isn't one of the things that makes Perl so "fun" I
>dunno what is. :D
>
>(note that while I'm sort of broad-casting my initial hopes on this to
>four groups on perl.org (perl.scripts, perl.beginners,
>perl.macperl.anyperl, perl.fwp), I'm confining responses (via reply-to
>and followup-to) to
>
> scripts@perl.org
>aka nntp://nntp.perl.org/perl.scripts/
>
>to consolidate things and reduce the required effort of following this
>thread to a single track. I hope this is the proper way to go about it
>-- despite years of experience with cross-posting on usenet, this is the
>first time I've thought about doing such a thing on a group that was
>also mirrored out as a mailing list. :\ Apologies and if this is the
>wrong thing to do, will the moderators let me know in private, and I'll
>do what I can to correct it. :)
>
>print pack "H*", "4a75737420416e6f74686572204d61635065726c204861636b65722c0d";
>--
>Scott R. Godin | e-mail : webmaster@webdragon.net
>Laughing Dragon Services | web : http://www.webdragon.net/
>It is not necessary to cc: me via e-mail unless you mean to speak off-group.
>I read these via nntp.perl.org, so as to get the stuff OUT of my mailbox. :-)
--
William R Ward bill@wards.net http://www.wards.net/~bill/
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