Re: Spam filters (was Re: mjd on heuristics, patents, stupid questions)

On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 08:55:58AM -0500, Hugo Haas wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2000, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote:
> [..]
> >     -- mjd, on http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/02/spamfilter.html
> 
> Even if it was not the subject of Gerald's email, I read this article
> about spam filtering and I'd like to know how everybody is filtering
> spam.

I used something called rblcheck invoked from within my procmailrc
that looks up domains in various blackhole lists out there, and it
seemed to work pretty well (trapped a lot of spam), but occasionally
it would also trap some valid mail (like the confirmation messages
for my recent speaker purchase.) So I turned it off a while ago.

Here's the stuff I was using in my procmailrc:

###########################################################################
# check RBL for blackholed IPs
# see http://www.procmail.org/jari/pm-tips-body.html#software_rbl_lookup_tool__c
:0
* ^Received: from.*\[\/[0-9.]+\].*by omicron\.pair\.com
{
    IP = $MATCH
    # trim it down to just the IP address
    :0
    * IP ?? ^^\/[0-9.]+
    {
        IP = $MATCH
        :0 W:
        * ! ? /usr/local/bin/rblcheck -q $IP
        | formail -A"RBL-Check-Info: `echo; /usr/local/bin/rblcheck -t $IP | sed 's/^/	/'`" >> $MAILDIR/lists/rbl-filtered
    }
}

So now I just delete spam from my inbox as it arrives, and try not
to get annoyed by it.

I think if I ever try to deal with it again, I'll handle it using
a whitelist (as opposed to a blacklist), with a list of people or
domains I expect to receive mail from, and filter everything else
into a mailbox that I scan once a week or so.

-- 
Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@impressive.net>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/

HURL: fogo mailing list archives, maintained by Gerald Oskoboiny