Getting Tough on Spam
Chris DiBona has an entertaining and informative article over at LinuxJournal called ASK Me No Questions, I’ll Tell You No Lies. With an inbox receiving 500 spam emails/day, he’s obviously in need of an industrial-strength solution. So he’s resorting to ASK (Active Spam Killer), a kind of challenge-response filter that requires unknown senders to reply to a confirmation message. It’s a nice Python proggie that you add to your procmail run-command file.
It reminds me of the SBC Privacy Guard service on your phone that screens unknown calls. Except this is a bit harsher. Some people will send you an e-mail, and then be asked to confirm their e-mail address before the first e-mail they sent will be allowed to reach you. This only happens the first time someone new e-mails you, but it might put off some people. Still, I’m becoming pretty desperate myself, and I’m considering installing it.