Re: Spam

[Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 04:00:55PM +0100, David N. Welton wrote:
> In any case, I think AJ's solution is pretty good and is worth
> pursuing.

For those on the list who don't follow -private, it was something to the
effect of:

When a new mail comes in:

	if from/sender is a subscriber:
		send it on
	if from/sender is in whitelist:
		send it on
	otherwise:
		store message for up to 48 hours
		send challenge to from/sender
		[ if valid response is received:
			add from/sender to whitelist
			send message
		]

The challenge/response should probably be the same sort of thing you get
for subscriptions. This'd allow people who send mail from an address
other than what they subscribe from to cope fairly easily, as long as
they're posting from a real address (or can add the appropriate headers
to point to a real address).

Adding a blacklist, or making it "subscriber to any debian.org list", or
making the challenge/response require more intelligence, or making a single
response work for all the stored messages from that person, would also be
options.

Cheers,
aj, idly pondering doing something similar for his personal mail...

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
We came. We Saw. We Conferenced. http://linux.conf.au/

  ``Debian: giving you the power to shoot yourself in each 
       toe individually.'' -- with kudos to Greg Lehey