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An AppleScript to forward spam to the FTC via Mail
Authored by: gabba1 on Feb 23, '06 04:13:43PM

How about a script that is even MORE useful?

How about a script that automatically backtracks EVERY incoming eMail to check to see if it is from a REAL eMail address. If it is, it lets the eMail through... if it is not and is a auto-generated address from a SPAM-bot... it automatically gets rejected and never even shows up in your inbox.

That would be much more helpful to me!



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ineffective
Authored by: sjk on Feb 23, '06 07:59:12PM

Briefly, the two main problems with your suggestion:

• There's no consistently accurate, reliable, and efficient way to verify that sender addresses on mail you receive are "real".
• Spam typically uses forged, but "real" (valid, RFC-compliant), addresses.

There are plenty of tools for detecting and filtering suspected spam (using different techniques) before it ever reaches your inbox. Even Apple Mail's default junk filter can often do a fairly decent job.



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An AppleScript to forward spam to the FTC via Mail
Authored by: TigerKR on Feb 27, '06 11:06:15AM

Try this hint:

"An AppleScript rule to check Mail against blackhole lists"

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030523090008320



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RBL effectiveness
Authored by: sjk on Feb 27, '06 06:58:44PM

Regardless of arguments and politics about RBL, it's working quite effectively with server-side filtering for identifying most spam I receive. Messages are tagged with X-RBL-Warning headers and get dumped directly to a junk mailbox where I've rarely found false positives. And Apple Mail's junk filter has been reasonably effective with handling the small remainder of non-RBL spam.

I've been more satisfied with that server/client combination than when all spam filtering was handled on the server. It's turned out to be easier junking a couple false negatives a day than it used to be dredging through the junkbox looking for significantly more false positives that mistakenly ended up there. I'm still undecided whether it's worth using JunkMatcher to do a more thorough job catching what Mail's junk filter misses.



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