Spam control? (was RE: virus)

[Eric Shubert]

If spam is the problem, a better mail server can be the solution. 
Running your own mail server isn't nearly as complicated as it used to be.

QmailToaster (http://wiki.qmailtoaster.com) with spamdyke is a very good 
combination. Spamdyke rejects 90+% of spam without even receiving (or 
scanning) the message. The sanesecurity extensions to clamav catch the 
lion's share of phishing attempts. With this setup, I get <1 spam per day.

Disclaimer: I'm presently the project lead for QmailToaster.

-- 
-Eric 'shubes'

On 11/09/2012 12:40 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:
> I don't remember the url, but a few years ago I found a site that had an
> interesting  idea to fight those who try to con people into handing over
> account information.  If you got one of these scam emaills, you would
> submit the url the phishers included.  Their system would generate
> random strings of text and submit these to the phishing site over and
> over again. The result being the phishers would have lots of bogus
> account data and would waste their time trying it.
>
> On 11/09/2012 08:51 AM, Carruth, Rusty wrote:
>> As I remember (but remember whose memory we are talking about :-) -
>>
>> I had 3 lists - those known to be spammers, those known to be ok, and
>> anybody else.  (Ok, so the 'anybody else' wasn't actually a LIST, it was
>> anybody not in the first 2 lists)
>>
>> Known spammers got some huge delay (I think I finally ended up with 24
>> hours!), known safe senders got zero delay, and unknown got a few
>> seconds (or maybe I made it zero, I don't remember).
>>
>> So non spammers got either zero or minimal delay.
>>
>> If I can remember, I'll see if I still have that config file somewhere,
>> cause now you got me curious!
>>
>> I should mention that there IS one 'small' downside - if you get ALL
>> your internet sockets tied up with spammers then you cannot receive (or
>> send) email (or do anything else network-related until one of the
>> sockets frees up).  I don't think I ever hit that limit, but then I only
>> do email for my family...
>>
>> Rusty
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>
>>> Rusty, how did tarpit and that delay time effect non spam users?
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 8:37 AM, Carruth, Rusty
>>> <Rusty.Carruth at smartstoragesys.com>  wrote:
>>>> ....
>>>>
>>>> I've tried running that thing that keeps spammers busy trying to
>>> deliver the email (tarpit?  I cannot remember - the idea is you keep
>>> telling unknown MTAs 'hold on a moment' for a while - say an hour or
>>> more, thus keeping their delivery rate low.  I should mention that at
>>> home I run my own MTA, so it was an option for me.  Anybody using
>> their
>>> ISP's MTA (or gmail, or...) cannot do this).  The problem is that you
>>> need a LOT of people running that for it to do much good in spam
>>> reduction overall, and I don't' know if it reduced mine (but it was
>>> satisfying to look at the headers and see that couple of hour delay).
>>> ...
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> PLUG-discuss mailing list -PLUG-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>
>
>
>