The war on spam!

[Blue]

I ran across this link today. Maybe you are aware of it already, but for those who aren't, it may be something to look into.

Sneakemail (http://sneakemail.com)

Has anyone been successful with this service?

[ihelpyou]

well Blue, I read thru the site but can't seem to put my finger on what they are offering.

Can you explain this? Maybe I am just tired.

[JuniorHarris]

Interesting, it appears to be an alias email address if you will, one which reroutes to your real email address. You can also configure it so any responses are also filtered through the alias account. Thus if any one alias email address is abused you can simply delete the alias, and no more messages. For more info see How to use Sneakemail (http://sneakemail.com/php/how.php), it may have a promising future as free email service providers have been folding.

[Blue]

JH is correct in his assesment. Additionally, and this directly associates with the topic title, is the fact that you can use it as a "spam tracker" as stated below (from the sneakemail site):

Another userful feature is evident if you're careful to create a new Sneakemail address for each contact you make. When spam starts appearing you will know exactly who has given out, loaned, or sold your address. It will be like a finger pointing right at them, or like DNA evidence. Perhaps online businesses and spammers will develop more respect for the Sneakemail address than for the regular kind and treat it better.

Although I have not actually tried out the service yet, I am assuming that for the tracking purposes above, one could become proactive in fighting the dirty little spamming @&*$%#*'s by reporting them to the proper authorities.

[ihelpyou]

:ohmy: not getting it yet.

To me, using my real web site email address makes things seem more professional than using a free email service that is available now.

How is this service different? I wish to use my site address so can I still use this service? How does it work on a site?

[Blue]

Most excellent point, Doug.

I guess that for those of us running a business, we must leave ourselves wide open (unless we've employed some of the methods discussed in this forum prior to the initial release of our email addy's).

This service could be used, I guess, for one's personal email addy's, and, I could see a benefit in creating an email address with the specific intent of harvesting spammer info to use as a tool to fight them.

Other opinions people?

[JuniorHarris]

I agree it could be very valuable in collecting spammer information...I may have to try that as time permits.

[Blue]

OK Doug,

As I felt that your question would apply to most of us here, I sent off an email to the contact at sneakemail's site specifically addressing your question, and received the answer quoted below:

My question:
> I am a member of a forum that has as one of it's topics "Spam Reports" intended to help the forums members and guests avoid and fight spam.

Your service came up as a topic of discussion and about the possibilities of using it. We are curious however, as to how those of us running an online business could avail ourselves to your service. Our question concerns how we could use your service in conjunction with our business email address(es), since we would need those to be visible to the public and our customers.

Do you have any suggestions in this light?

Their answer:
Thats a interesting question. If i'm understing it correctly the core of your question is that you need "presentable" email addresses but sneakemail
generates horrible, ugly, and impossible to remember addresses. You may even
want to put the potentially spam-proof addresses on business cards.

Some small business to put sneakemail addresses on their websites, and this
isnt a problem of course because people only have to click on them to get
them right.

I really wish I had an answer for you. If we made the addresses easier to
remember and more presentable then they would be open to Rumplestiltskin
attacks (automated guessing) and that wouldnt make anybody happy.

We appreciate the use of our service, but we want the best for our users and
dont want to them buy the wrong sized shoe so to speak.

If that doesnt answer your question let me know.

--
Kevin Swope
SneakePostmaster General

[ihelpyou]

Real good Blue.

You got back a fast reply from them. At least we know they are extremely professional by the contents of it. Kudos to them!

I kind of thought that was the case. The service is just like having a hotmail account and redirecting to your main email. Difference being is that it would be long term where hotmail and the other free services come and go.

Very good to know though as a lot of you could possibly use this service in some way.

Seems like you could also define who is spamming.

[bigDugan]

If you are using SENDMAIL as your mail server, you can take advantage of Sendmail's Anti-Spam Provisions (http://www.sendmail.org/antispam.html) by using the access.db (http://www.sendmail.org/m4/features.html#access_db), which gives you the ability to allow or refuse to accept mail from specified domains and email addresses.

This works great for email spammers.

Now my mail server will reject any emails from the email addresses or domain names in my access file. It will bounce the email back without accepting it or spooling it.

All you need to do, is use an editor to edit your /etc/mail/access file. I use pico, so my command line looks like this: % pico /etc/mail/access

Here's a partial sample of my access file:

#
# by default we allow relaying from localhost...
localhost.localdomain RELAY
localhost RELAY
ascorp@cadvision.com REJECT
pcbellin@telusplanet.net REJECT
default@prodigy.net.mx REJECT

I added the entries which contain the "REJECT" command. After you have edited the text file /etc/mail/access, you must hash the file into a database format and then map it with the following command: % makemap hash access < access

What I really like about this, is that the message doesn't get "accepted" by my server and is bounced back to whence it came.