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Re: MS mail bombs



At Mon, 22 Sep 2003 06:26:05 +0100,
Karsten M. Self wrote:

> on Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 12:09:50PM -0400, Bijan Soleymani
> (bijan@psq.com) wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 20, 2003 at 09:19:32AM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> > > The other way is a neat little trick I use on my ISP
> > > account- limit the size of messages to download, I limit
> > > them to 2000 bytes. You can try different sizes to see what
> > > works. Then when I check mail a popup window appears
> > > showing a list of messages, with subject lines and the
> > > senders of any messages bigger than 2000 bytes. Then I can
> > > either leave them on the server, delete them, or download
> > > them. I don't know if all mail clients do this, it's worth
> > > checking out.
> > 
> > I use a different trick when I'm on dialup and don't want to
> > download huge messages. I simply use mutt to access my pop
> > mailbox.  Then mutt only downloads the headers from the pop
> > server.  And then I get a list of all the messages, who
> > they're from, what the subject is and what the size is. I can
> > then delete whichever ones I don't want to download.  After
> > that's done I use fetchmail to retrieve the mail as I
> > normally would.
> 
> The problem at current rates of Swen delivery is that I'd have
> to check my mail 10-20 times or more daily to avoid
> mail-over-quota bounces.
> 
> If Swen is the shape of things to come, it's the end of dial-up
> POP3 mail accounts.

There's a simple solution.  Have the list munge the email
addresses before it appears in any publicly viewable form (e.g.
in the form of a web page).  My only addresses that are receiving
the mail bombs are the ones I'm using to post to lists.  I know
this for a fact because I'm using a different address to retrieve
my Debian-User mail and that address is clean (though it does get
its dose of the usual spam).  My posting address though is
constantly over quota.  So I know that this list is partly
responsible for the bombs ;-).

That or allow only subscribed or whitelisted addresses to post.



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