[lug] ISP for antispam recommendations?

[D. Stimits]

Peter Hutnick wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 26 March 2002 08:47 pm, D. Stimits wrote:
> > I'm wondering if anyone here has an ISP in the Boulder/Longmont area
> > that offers customized front-ends so that I could set up a personal
> > blacklist of domains or senders to reject? I want it at the ISP level
> > because I don't want to spend the bandwidth to download the 200 or so
> > spams I get per day. Even if I don't read them and I delete as fast as I
> > can, each morning I would have to spend at least half an hour repeatedly
> > hitting the delete button. Lately I've reported them all to spamcop, my
> > ISP claims that use blackhole lists, but they unfortunately seem to
> > override it in the worst cases. I'm thinking it might be time to dump my
> > ISP for someone that actually helps. In my location only 56k is
> > available, there are no lines capable of DSL here, and so far cable
> > modem service is non-existent. I consider the wireless solutions
> > inferior due to the desire to have consistent low-latency connections
> > (and last time I checked, less than a year ago, I was at the edge of
> > normal range anyway).
> 
> ISPs tend to not want to do too much filtering since they don't want to be
> responsible for incorrectly junking important email.

I'm looking for someone that lets me set the rules.

> 
> Luckily, there is a happy medium between having your ISP handle all of your
> spam and handling it all by hand.
> 
> You can use procmail to customize the handling with any ISP that gives a
> shell account and uses procmail as the MDA.

So I guess I'd have to expand my question then about ISP's that handle
Boulder/Longmont 56k lines, use procmail that can be customized, and
offer shell access. I'm curious if any local providers actually allow
procmail adjustments?

> 
> Failing that you can use fetchmail to grab all your mail (potentially from
> several sources) and process it, delivering only the gems to your inbox (or
> better yet, sorting it to sensible IMAP folders).
> 
> This would still burden your 56k modem with downloading the SPAM, but let's
> face it, that isn't that big a deal.  The largest SPAM I could find on my
> system (I don't do any automated filtering, and I'm on 56k as well) was 11k.
> 200 11k messages is less than 2.2M.  (I admit that I find your 200 messages
> figure suspect, and feel that 2.2M is a HUGE over-estimation)  Figure you
> only get a very poor 2k (that's k-bytes) per second that would total less
> than 20 min/day.  Less than one minute per hour.  Realistically we are
> talking about seconds per hour on average.

When I don't report spammers, I spend about half an hour a day just
deleting email and downloading it. Yesterday after not doing it for a
day, and reporting it all to spamcop (I have it set up for mass
production), I spent 5 to 6 hours at it. It's hard work and I don't like
it. The spammers are not welcome here.

> 
> I'm no SPAM apologist, but I hardly see it as being a huge deal.

On a light day I spend about an hour dealing with it. Over time, it is
extremely aggravating.

> 
> Either way, no need to specially pick an ISP to avoid it.

Not required, but if I want it done right, I expect it'll require an ISP
that at least helps in complaints about repeat senders that won't stop.
Being from non-USA origins, the FTC and local laws have no effect. An
ISP that would let me set a rule to bounce mail would be nice, I see
simply deleting it as giving in to "do it the spammer's way, or else".

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> -Peter
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