[lug] ISP for antispam recommendations?

[Peter Hutnick]

On Wednesday 27 March 2002 08:35 pm, D. Stimits wrote:
> I'm looking for someone that lets me set the rules.

Of course you should ask, but 99 times out of 100 if they use procmail for 
delivery and offer shells you're set.  

> > 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?

Sure, procmail allows a local .procmailrc for each user.  They won't let you 
screw with the global settings, but that won't matter to you.

> > 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).

Don't dismiss the fetchmail/procmail on a local server option.  'Comeon, be a 
Linux hack!

> 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.

This is just the point.  There are tons of ways to >/dev/null mail before you 
ever see it.  For example SpamAssassin uses everything from key words to 
multiple blacklists to suspicious headers to "score" mail.  Then you can set 
a threshold.  Nice.

> > 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.

I tend to think that fighting SPAM becomes pointless when you spend more time 
complaining etc. than it wastes naturally.  Bottom line is that SPAM exists 
because somebody actually spends money in response to it.  (Believe it or 
not.)  Complaining pretty much just wastes more of your time.  If you really 
want to fight it make sure that no one you know pays any attention to it.  
That's just MHO, and if it is working for you I encourage you to go nuts!  ;-)

Good Luck!

-Peter