🚀 go-pugleaf

[followups set to demon.service as this is going off-topic for a Mac
group, I think.]

In article <6766@purr.demon.co.uk>,
bogus address <bogus@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I've sent a copy to my ISP (Demon) who have been sympathetic but
>> have implied that it's my problem.
>
>Demon's attitude to incoming spam is fucking moronic and I'm looking
>for an alternative provider as a result of it.

Are there other service providers who do provide the sort of filtering
ability you're looking for? I'd be interested to know about them. The
only way I can think of to implement

>A simple rule like "check the sites on the Received: lines and if any
>of them are in UUNET's or PSINET's address space, bounce it" 

is to get a shell account and use procmail. 

>About 80% of all the mail I now get is spam, and Demon provides no way
>to filter it at the server end - all I can do is filter by SMTP
>envelope, which takes a ridiculous amount of maintenance and connect
>time, and entirely fails to deal with spams like this one.  

Things you could do:

- Get a shell account and learn about regexps (see above).

- Use POP3 and filter on the headers (assuming Demon's server supports
  the "top" command). I imagine there are tools that do this, or you
  could roll your own (I'd use Python: it's a nice language, there's a
  POP3 library and it's available for the Mac).

- Use MAPS's filtered forwarding service: they filter against the RBL,
  DUL and RSS before passing the mail on. $50 per year: a bit more
  expensive than your average forwarding service, but your money goes to
  support a good cause. http://www.mail-abuse.org/

>What the hell is the point of all the fancy services they provide if
>they can't keep something as basic as email usable?

I think offering every user a generalised header filtering ability is a
bit unlikely. What they could do is at least tag, and preferrably
provide the option to bounce, mail from servers which are on a user
selected combination of the lists mentioned above. Demon is getting
considerably more than $50 a year from us and mainly provides things
other people are giving away free: you're right to say there ought to be
some more value added services.

-- 
----- Paul Wright ------| "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and
-paul.wright@pobox.com--| uncertainty!"
http://pobox.com/~pw201 |                 -- Vroomfondel