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Re: Hopefully simple question, and is this a good idea?

2002-02-15 08:17:58

Hmmmm...  I see what you mean. I guess this wasn't such a great idea.

Here is an example of what I'm trying to stop:

X-EM-Version: 6, 0, 1, 0
X-EM-Registration: #00F06206106618006920
To: "Southeastern Internet University" <Bonanza(_at_)themail(_dot_)net>
From: "" <Bonanza(_at_)themail(_dot_)net>
Subject: College Degree in 2 Months!
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 07:20:35 -0500

Notice the To: line....  Now, I know that behind the scenes this obiviously
had a legitimate email address at my domain on it (or sendmail would have
rejected it as you pointed out), but if I can trap it based on the To: line
(since my domain is not called themail.net), that was the thought process
behind killing anything with a .net extension.

I see though that if there are mutliple recipients, and any of them have a
.net on their address, that this would kill wanted mail.

Back to the drawing board.  :)









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At 09:05 2002-02-14 -0600, SMORRIS(_at_)UP(_dot_)COM wrote:
Assume my domain name is anything.com. Therefore, anything addressed to
someone(_at_)anything(_dot_)net is most-likely spam.

I'd say there is an increased chance of it.  Pray nobody uses it in an
address comment...

What if someone is unsure of which domain a user is at:

         From: stoopidaoler(_at_)aol(_dot_)com
         To: dave(_at_)anything(_dot_)com, dave(_at_)anything(_dot_)net
         Subject: Sorry dave, I can't remember which is your address

(assume for a moment that this is addressed to a user of yours, not to
someone who has the sense to disassociate AOL users).

Or multiple people are validly addressed:

         To: validuser(_at_)anything(_dot_)com
         Cc: drinkingbuddy(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)net

Do you think it would be a good idea to send anything addressed to (any
name here)@(any word here).net to bit hell

If that's the actual envelope recipient ("RCPT TO" in SMTP), then your MTA
should reject it since it isn't handling email for that domain (and if it
doesn't reject it, then your MTA is misconfigured).  As a result, procmail
should never see the message -- for procmail to see it (as LDA or invoked
from .procmailrc), the message has to have been addressed to a local user.

If you're saying that just because a .net address appears in the TO: or CC:
fields, you're going to toss plenty of perfectly good email, because the
expression you give doesn't even necessitate that it's a .net variation of
your own domain.

assuming that if it was really intended for a user at my domain, it would
be properly addressed (with the .com extension?)

I take it you've never used, say, a mailing list?  Please take a moment and
examine the headers of this message and tell me who I addressed it
to.  Now, if the procmail list were hosted on a .net, would you be throwing
it away?

I know this won't catch all spam (as if there is a way to
catch it all), but this would probably catch a good chunk of it.

I think it'll catch a much bigger chunk of perfectly valid email.

Lastly, assuming this is a good idea, would this recipe work to accomplish
this?

:0
* ^TO.*\.net
/dev/null

Really, really, really big suggestion: DO NOT file into /dev/null when
experimenting - even if you were to get confirmation that this was a good
idea (and it isn't), you should want to file the messages away so that you
at least have a CHANCE at pulling mis-hits out of the wastebin.


---
  Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

  Procmail disclaimer: <
  http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
  Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.

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