[ic] What do you think? (RH you idiots)

[Chris Rapier]

Steffen Dettmer wrote:
> 
> * Erik wrote on Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 12:29 -0700:
> > Why is it, companies like RedHat can't build a friggen mailing
> > list that only allows subscribers to post?
> 
> Maybe they have an open policy. Many people think that it is
> important to have unrestricted communication and they call it
> freedom :)

Freedom includes the freedom from annoyance. Its the balance tahst the
tricky part.

> > I'm so sick of these companies HELP SPAMMERS. You idiots.
> 
> You can adjust you local spam filter. Try procmail. But be
> careful, since you cannot be sure that you don't get
> false-positives (that means, some mail from a friend gets
> dropped).

Here is a fun little gimmick to filter spam - This won't work with list
mail but it will help personal mail a lot. Set up a series of filters
that will catch all of your subscribed list mail. Then set up a filter
whcih filters on your name. The last filter send off everything that
slipped through to a 'trash' folder. The idea is that the majority of
spam mail isn't actually addressed to the recipient so if your name
isn't in the To: or CC: and its not from a mailing list its probably
spam.

This does catch most spam but will occasionally force you to miss mail
from friends using the BCC: fun.

I've included a sample procmail filter that does this....
(note, its been rewritten for maximum clarity)

PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/psc/bin
MAILDIR=$HOME/IMAP/ 
DEFAUT=$HOME/mbox
LOGFILE=$HOME/.procmail/log
LOCKFILE=$HOME/.procmail/.lockmail

:0:
* ^From(Internet-Drafts@ietf.org)
Drafts

:0:
* ^TO(ietf)
ietf

:0:
* ^From.*(infobeat.com)
News

:0:
* ^TO(interchange-users)
minivend

:0:
* ^Cc.(interchange-users)
minivend

:0:
* ^TO(minivend-users)
minivend

:0:
* ^Cc.(minivend-users)
minivend

:0:
* ^TO(rapier)
$HOME/mbox

:0:
* 
spam