Re: Dealing with current backscatter spam

At this point, I think you're just going about finding a solution the  
wrong way.  You need to find a way from every having to deal with the  
spam; not hacky work-arounds like moving it to your ftp space and ftp- 
ing your mail down.
OPTIONS:
Option 1:
You could host your domains, or just the mail for your domains, on  
something like Google Apps for free.
Option 2:
You could pay someone to handle your email issues for you, ESPs like  
Fusemail or Rackspace's MailTrust.
Option 3:
You could get someone to sit between your domain/servers and the  
outside world to do filtering for you: Google's Postini does this, but  
you have a lot of other options like Cloudmark and Mimecast.  (In  
particular, I hear good things and a lot of hosts using Cloudmark.)
Option 4: (not managed email, but worth considering)
Get a cheap VPS (ie. 10 Euro per month at Linode; and not much more at  
Slicehost) and set it up as your mail server.  There you can tailor  
your spam filtering software to your needs (ie. use Postfix  
restrictions to deny hosts at the SMTP layer, then use Amavis-new to  
layer DSpam, Spamassassin, ClamAV, and whatever else you want).
RATIONALE:
Quite honestly, I'd say Option 3 is the best for you; except that they  
usually want to work with businesses, not individuals; and so that  
drops to the bottom of the list.  Postini is an option; but it is a  
little Do-It-Yourself-y, and my evaluation of your needs and comments  
suggests that you would be happiest if someone else would just make  
this problem go away for you entirely.  Everything I say about Option  
1 below also applies to Postini, however.
Option 4 might be good for you if you (A) had custom needs that  
couldn't be met elsewhere, (B) had the time to keep up to date on the  
latest spam fighting techniques and the time to implement them.  I  
don't think you meet any of those requirements: you yourself said you  
didn't have the time to run your own server, and you seem to just need  
someone to get the spam out of your inbox; these aren't very new  
issues, lots of people have them, and thus lots of people have  
solutions.
So, this leaves us with Option 1 and 2, which are basically the same;  
just in one case you pay.  Google Apps and Postini could work well if  
you like how Google does things; but you shouldn't expect any support  
out of either service (not even if you're paying for Postini, unless  
you have a couple thousand users).  Nonetheless; I suspect Google has  
the best spam filtering among the big four ESPs (Yahoo, Hotmail,  
Gmail, AOL, in that order, I believe); and so they have the economies  
of scale which lets them provide very good filtering.  Basically, you  
have many thousands of people training your Spam filter for you,  
overseen by Google's sysadmins.
So the strong points of Google Apps and Postini is they are free/ 
cheap; and they have economies of scale.  The cons is that if they  
don't do a good enough job; then there's no one you can turn to.
Option 2 is paying an email hosting service.  I can recommend several,  
seeing as I'm particular enough about my mail flow that I've tried a  
ton of them.  The advantages of a managed email hosting provider is  
that you can always call them up if too much spam is getting through,  
and they will work with you to reduce (or they will if they're good;  
if they don't help you out, then leave).  The disadvantages is they  
are a little more expensive (though relatively cheap compared to your  
bills, it seems, and the exchange rate is on your side), and they lack  
economies of scale.
MY SUGGESTION:  [OPTION 2]
Your bills will still be smaller than the bandwidth bills you're  
incurring, and they'll handle the spam in a way that doesn't get  
people pissed off at you and your domain, and they'll work with you to  
get this done.
Your current strategy is unsustainable in every possible way, and  
there are much better and much more efficient ways to do this, and  
your life will be a lot easier once you get the proper assistance in  
deal with this issue.


...but naturally, it's up to you to handle this as you see fit...


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