X-Message-Number: 17149
From: "Tim Freeman" <>
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:08:49 -0700
Subject: RE: Junk mail-------- help
References:  <>

From: david pizer <>
>I get junk E-mail.  I have asked the senders to remove me from their lists.

If they receive a remove request, many of them rightly regard this as
evidence that the email address functions, so they'll be sure to send
you more spam later.

> Sometimes they do and sometimes they ignore my request.  Also, the junk
>mailers must sell my name to other junk mailers because sometimes the same
>errors in a new mailer show up.
>
>Is there some way a person can send the junk-mailers (who don't respect a
>person's request to be removed from their lists) a message that would jam
>up their equipment, or send  a kind of virus that would cause them some
>kind of aggrivation, so that when a person asked to be removed, the person
>could also state that they were going to retaliate in some way if the junk
>mailer did not obey???

No human is reading your reply, so threats of retaliation won't work.
Even if you could destroy their hardware, there are enough different
spammers out there that the destruction wouldn't decrease the incoming
flood of junk by much in the short term.

I have a solution to this problem that I am happy with.  If you send
me email, and my email reading system doesn't know you, you'll get
your email back saying you have to put a particular string in the
subject and send it back to me before I'll read it.  Humans who are
worth talking to will do this.  Robots very rarely do this.  

(My email system presently knows   Let me know if
you want me to take you off the list, so you can send me email and get
the response a stranger would.)

It's all done with procmail, which is a Unix utility for processing
mail.  The .procmailrc file is nontrivial but not really difficult
either.  I don't know of a Windows subsitute, but I'm sure there is
one out there somewhere.

I got this from someone on the calorie restriction mailing list years
ago and customized it quite a bit for my own use.  I'll send you mine,
if you want; feel free to change it.

Another approach is to use realtime blacklists (RBL's), which are
lists of alleged spammers that are maintained by volunteers.  I have
never been on the good end of an exchange with an RBL, though, so I
can't vouch for it.  Look the keyword up in Google or whatever if you
want to give it a try.

Another approach is to rent an email box with a spam guard from
pobox.com.  I haven't tried it but I know someone who has been using
it for years and is happy with it.

-- 
Tim Freeman       
; formerly 

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