Grex Oldcoop Conference

Item 231: Junk mail filter?

Entered by trh on Wed Jan 5 05:07:46 2005:

Hello Folks:

I am not sure if this is the right conference about this topic. If not 
please tell me where to pose the following.

I have been recently getting huge e-mails, mostly with virus infected 
attachments.

Is there a way I can get rid of these as they arrive on my shell 
account? 

My mailbox gets full within two or three hours after I clean it...


Thanks,

Ahmet Toprak
9 responses total.
#1 of 9 by gelinas on Wed Jan 5 05:26:07 2005:

This is on the list of things to do.  Right now, we don't have a really good
solution.

#2 of 9 by keesan on Wed Jan 5 06:08:41 2005:

If you like, you can copy my .forward and .procmailrc files and change keesan
to your login at the beginning of .procmailrc (and delete any lines that start
in #), and then email me for more help.  If most of your junk mail (spam) is
coming from just one or two places it should be easy to stop.  However it is
also a problem that the filter throws out some real mails unless you list in
it everyone who might mail you.  Another possibility is to sign up for another
account and stop using the current one, and don't ever post the new address
online, just give it to trusted friends.  My partner has never received any
spam at grex, nor have two friends.  

Procmail (which takes over when you tell it to in .forward using instructions
in .procmailrc) decides which mails to throw out based on who they are from,
the subject line, and what they are about.  For instance, I have set it to
throw out any mails about viagra or rolex, or containing obviously stupid
things like 0pt0ut.  Sometimes they include in the message a URL which you
can filter on.  But what you are getting does not sound like spam but more
like some friend has a virus on their computer.  

Is there some way to reject all mails with attachments, or attachments ending
in certain strings?  What size are these mails?  Can an user set a lower
maximum mail size limit?

#3 of 9 by trh on Wed Jan 5 19:08:45 2005:

Sindi, thanks for your advice. I will look into using procmail.

Joseph, I figured what change is causing the problem. On the older 
machine we had a limit--I believe 100K-- on the size of an e-mail. I 
think that is not there any more. So anything large ends up in our 
inboxes.

Perhaps an easy fix may be to reinstitute this limit.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Ahmet Toprak

#4 of 9 by dpc on Tue Jan 11 16:01:44 2005:

The lcak of an effective spam filter on NextGrex is a *major*
problem.  People should not have to customize something; it
should be a System standard.

#5 of 9 by keesan on Tue Jan 11 20:09:56 2005:

If grex used something like spamassassin, you still need a way to put things
on the white list.  Spamassassin throws out all my emailed electric bills (it
insist, among other things, that they are 'porn').

#6 of 9 by marcvh on Tue Jan 11 20:31:35 2005:

Wow, Detroit Edison is HAWT!

#7 of 9 by keesan on Tue Jan 11 20:59:39 2005:

It also said the mails were coming from a fake address, had green fonts,
images, and too much html.  So I have to remember once a month to go online
to look at my account with links (which is not working to do that here at grex
- but at least I should be able to get the email notifications that I owe
$0.00 becuase it is automatically deducted).

#8 of 9 by tod on Sun Jan 23 16:29:06 2005:

re #6
deja and I both worked there
*cough*

#9 of 9 by jesuit on Wed May 17 02:15:23 2006:

TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE

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