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Domain: procmail.org

Stories and comments across the archive that link to procmail.org.

Comments · 54

  1. Spam filtering via procmail by Elkman · · Score: 2 · on Can We Effectively Scan For E-Mail Viruses?
    Luckily, I've been able to avoid most E-mail viruses (except for the chain letters, anyway). I usually find out about them at work, and there's usually enough people panicking about them when I get in that I know not to read my mail.

    As far as spam filtering goes, though, it's nearly impossible to do it effectively using a prebuilt package. The spammers seem to have plenty of new tricks up their sleeve all the time. (My favorite is the one saying "This is not spam." If you have to say it isn't spam, then it's spam.) I've written some rather elaborate filtering using procmail, and it's been quite accurate. The best part is that I can make adjustments as I go along. On the flip side, it isn't 100% effective -- occasionally spam gets through, and occasionally it misses something that is spam. And, of course, to program in procmail you have to have a good understanding of how regular expressions work.

    You can take a look at my procmail filter here, as well as a score-based algorithm that only bounces the mail if it matches more than one of the phrases listed there. Go ahead and use those examples if they help. And, check out procmail.org for all the documentation.

  2. Re:Then don't use the web interface... by v4mpyr · · Score: 1 · on Hotmail about to collapse under load

    "basically letting you use your hotmail account as an anonymous forwarding address"

    Whoops... I forgot to mention that it downloads directly to your /mail/spool/[user] file, so if you use procmail and the like you can easily filter out all that SPAM.

  3. sendmail + SmartList by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1 · on What Setup Is Best For Large Mailing Lists?

    Set you up a little linux box with a moderately tweaked sendmail setup (at least queue time and retries need to be non-default). Get procmail and SmartList. its more customizable and stable than the other options mentioned, I think, but it will be a bit harder to set up than some of the others.

    I use basically the same software to do a job very similar to what you're doing, just not on a daily basis... more like every 2 or 3 days. I've only got 3Kbps of bandwidth available to it; and it finishes 10K emails to lists of 10,000 to 15,000 addresses in under 12 hours, usually.

  4. Re:Not the real cost. by JerkBoB · · Score: 1 · on Charging for Cable Internet Access in Australia
    The real cost of spam is the time you waste sifting it out from among your worthwhile mail.

    Procmail to the rescue!

    Kills spam dead!

    Requires access to a unix-ish shell account. May not be suitable for children under 5. Contains no MSG. Batteries not included. Not to be taken internally. Keep away from open flame. Do not taunt happy fun ball.

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...