procmail
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Spamming list members

2002-09-12 15:47:13
At 22:49 2002-09-12 +0100, Alan Clifford wrote:

I will simply not tolerate this kind of behaviour by people who think
that, because I have made an email address public, they can email all
sorts of junk to me.  Now email sent to my usenet addresses don't even
reach my mailboxes - they are just deleted so I don't have to download
them.

I set up a host in DNS (actually, more than one), called lutefisk. When I post to usenet (which isn't frequent these days), I post with a simple "to email, replace lutefisk with mail". That really isn't too demanding of anyone who needs to send an email reply (considering that, just as with lists, I prefer to participate on the forum itself, not privately via email), since the normal mode of "reply" on usenet is to post a followup article to the newsgroup.

That hostname is valid in DNS, but I point the MX at the MX of whichever corporate spammer has annoyed me most recently. What this does is directs the mail to some OTHER server to be rejected there - my server doesn't have to reject _anything_, *AND* harvesters which cycle usernames on hosts they locate will continue to go nowhere. My only hit is the nominal traffic for servicing the DNS lookup itself.

It has worked well for me. Accounts which I'd previously made the fool mistake of posting with to usenet were, as other people have found for themselves, immediatley harvested and spewed to.

---
 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.

_______________________________________________
procmail mailing list
procmail(_at_)lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)DE
http://MailMan.RWTH-Aachen.DE/mailman/listinfo/procmail

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>