Re: Recent spam increase

["T.J. Duchene" <tj@kewlness.net>]

Steve Lamb wrote:
.
> 
>     Not true, mutt excels at mixing mail to the point where it is utterly
> incapable of doing so without forcing the user to go to extraordinary lengths
> to keep their mail untangled.  Hence my pointing out that modern mail clients
> can keep mail separate and cited mutt as an example of one that manifestly cannot.
> 
Not to sound off too much here when I haven't been part of the
conversation, but MUA's aren't really designed to stop spam or perform
message sorting.

I can say that with some confidence since I spend a reasonable
percentage of my time programming mail servers for ISPs.

Granted, several of the new MUAs aka "mail clients" or more precisely
"mail user agents" have some very primitive filtering capabilities, but
ladies and gentlemen, the most practical mail filtering or sorting is
almost always done server side before your MUA even gets the mail.

Many ISPs only perform cursory mail scans for spam or sorting - because
if they get too elaborate, users make phone calls asking where mail went.


My humble advice to those who care...learn to use SpamAssassin (or some
other milter), procmail, ClamAV or even MailScanner (for the opensource
server admin crowd).

Don't expect Outlook, Thunderbird, Mutt, Pine, or even Evolution to do
anything more than simple blob sorts or spam checking.

They really aren't designed for it, although I will admit Thunderbird's
(or IceDove's) filter can be made reasonable for "low techies" if your
ISP uses SpamAssassin headers.

Well, I've said my two cents..

Have a good day,
T.J.