Building A Better Inbox (Updated)

vudujava writes "c|net is reporting that a new free (Update: not free, actually, read more for details.), web based email service is opening it's doors today. They promise to deliver "100% spam free" email to their users by using a challenge-response system to all incoming, first-time mail. Catch the entire story here. Although the idea isn't new, it shows that we are notching up the "war on spam"." Alert reader George Hotelling points out this post on Politech which may give you pause when it comes to the new mail service's Terms of Service. And kraksmoka writes "As reported on this article on MSNBC : 'Hotmail subscribers are now limited to sending only 100 messages a day "in an effort to prevent spammers from using Hotmail to spread spam," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager.'" dlanod writes "In your snippet on the main page you report mailblocks.com as "a new free, web based email service". Looking at Mailblocks' site, it actually costs $9.95/year for the standard service, or $24.95/year for the expanded service with no free option listed (https://app1.mailblocks.com/register.htm)."

Comments

UN resolution #4882372

[Anonymous Coward]

This undeclared "war on spam" is unauthorized imperialist aggression!

Call It A Night, Cowboy!

[sulli]

Because limits on posts work so well for the slashdot trolls.

Seriously, who spams from Hotmail anyway? Don't all the real spammers use custom software with a built-in smtp server? I've gotten enough spams advertising it, after all.

Re:SA still works

[stratjakt]

If you want to try it out, you will (most likely) need your own machine handling mail (if you're a broadband or DSL user, this is easy enough, I'll assume you've made that step...)

Now, make sure Perl is installed.

Now, as root, type "perl -MCPAN -e shell" and follow the instructions to set up Perl's configuration system.

In that shell, type "install Mail::SpamAssassin".

Exit that shell and type "/etc/init.d/spamassassin start"

You will want to do what your OS prefers for making sure this starts at boot time, under Red Hat Linux, that's "/sbin/chkconfig --levels 35 spamassassin on"

Exit your root shell, and do the rest as your user account.

Assuming you use sendmail with procmail (see the SpamAssassin site for other MTA configuration steps), put: :0fw
| spamc -f
into your .procmailrc.

SpamAssassin is now doing its job. It just marks messages that it thinks are spam. See the example procmailrc [spamassassin.org] on spamassassin.org for more information on how you can move the mail to another folder, delete it, or even more complex things. Also, there's a procmail bug that the example config can help you work around.

If you're doing this on a busy site, I recommend adding "-m 20" or so to your spamd command-line to throttle periods of intense mail delivery.

You can also configure SpamAssassin to do lots of useful stuff just the way you like it. There's a FAQ on your site that will walk you through it, but after the first time spamd handles mail for you, it will create a ".spamassassin/user_prefs" file that has good comments in it that guide you through common configuration needs (like whitelisting users).

Is that all!?

I'll forward this to my grandma toute-suite.

I have the solution to spam!

[fredrikj]

Add the following to your mail processing software:

if (inmsg == spam)
{
delete(inmsg);
}

You may have to change the names of the variables/functions to suit those in your application's source code.

I haven't tested it extensively, but the algorithm seems solid.