[LMB] OT: AKICOTL Dealing with spam

[Mark Allums]

Francis Turner wrote:
> On Feb 17, 2008 4:58 AM, Mark Allums <mark at allums.com> wrote:
>> Those addresses are spoofed, and probably belong to some
>> poor, unsuspecting slob not unlike myself.
> 
> And/or totally fictitious
Yes.

>> As far as I can tell, GoDaddy doesn't have a way for a user to mark an
>> email as spam unless the user is using the web-based client.  I don't
>> want to use that, I prefer using POP mail and Thunderbird.
> 
> I think you can't use GoDaddy for that. 

GoDaddy has a [non-free] email service, with a web client.  Much like 
gmail or Yahoo mail[1], but with GoDaddy's own script-based client.  It 
does have spam ("bulk") classification.  It is theoretically opt-in, but 
some senders get bounced anyway.  The list mail was bouncing some, and I 
got booted by the list server for it.  You can manually add addresses 
and domains to a whitelist or a blacklist.  I added the list's host 
domain to the whitelist, and the bounces seem to have stopped.  If you 
use the web client, and have the spam classifier turned on, you can 
individually call GoDaddy's attention to the message, and it will add a 
datum to its expert system.  However, I prefer to leave the spam filter 
turned off at that choke point, and do the sorting myself.

Nevertheless, I would like have my cake and eat it, too.  Specifically, 
I would like to use POP mail and still be able to tell them that a 
particular message is spam.  Since I can't do this, I would like to at 
least sometimes add a known spammer to the blacklist.


I have 2 suggestions
> 1) run the mail through google's Gmail. The spam filtering on that is excellent
> 2) download popfile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ ) or onw of its
> rivals and run the mail through that.

I wold rather not use gmail.  Anyway, although they do have world-class 
spam classifiers, there are some similar problems using them with POP3.


>> How do I identify the real sender of a spam message, and add them to the
>> blacklist?
> You can't. For some spam the "reply-to" field is a good guide but for
> the ones that are simply pointing you to a website or where there is
> another email address embedded in the mail then it is just as bad as
> the "From:" field.

Well, there are the "official" information fields, and then there is the 
address that the mail actually came from.  Of course, the mail could 
have gone through any number of open relays before that, which is part 
of the problem. And I am aware that getting the true address of someone 
may require the cooperation of several ISPs/router owners, etc.

But I was hoping someone could help out with the easier stuff.

I don't know enough about email headers to do much, and I don't really 
relish wading through the RFCs on email.  I don't really have much idea 
where to start, other than random Googling.

--Mark Allums