Shmuel Metz wrote in a message to All:
SM> I'm considering writing a program to generate complaints about spam.
SM> I'd like to scan the headers for E-mail and IP address, throw out
SM> the invalid ones, add the upstream providers and generate a list of
SM> complaint addresses for each. I want to use all of the obvious user
SM> names, provided that they exist. To do all of this I need to FINGER,
SM> TELNET and WHOIS. I don't want the overhead of calling the
SM> utilities, and don't even know whether a native WHOIS is available.
I have seen a native program that will make up a return
message for spam. However, I question how good these
things are as many of the big spammers now have sites
that really don't care how often you request they stop
spamming you. As a matter of fact, complaining may
even make things worse as it will assure them that
your e-mail address is good and can then be sold
to other bulk (spam) mailers.
Perhaps a better way to handle it would be to
design your program to scan the offending
mail and automatically add the sender to a kill
file list. The other part would be to have
another program that would scan the email
on the server and kill messages from those
offending senders listed in the killfile.
This could be command line, run in the background
with the user selecting the time between mail
checks on the server. it would have to be small,
and not require much cpu time.
Actually , the best solution would be if
it was written for a server, that would
allow users to post their own killfiles
by forwarding the offending e-mail to
the anit-spam robot running on the server.
Naturally it would have to set up so each
user had his own killfile list and could
view and change it at any time. It would
be like having call-blocking on the
telephone.
joe
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