1. Boxbe AntiSPAM

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    Today I received an email from Boxbe support telling me they had finally given users the option to turn off their "coutesy notification" system.  I couldn't be happier!  I thought I'd take this post to share about my SPAM problems, and my solution.

    The Problem

    GMail SPAM filtering is nice.  I may not have it forever, and don't like to count on it, but it works very well.  Unfortunately I made the choice when I registered this domain name to set up a catch-all.  At first that was fine, but after over a year *@singpolyma.net was receiving so much SPAM, so fast, that even the GMail SPAM filter couldn't keep up.  I began to receive over 40 SPAM (sometimes over 200) per day, sometimes all at once!  I didn't want to disable the catch-all though… that felt like the wrong solution.

    The Right Solution

    I decided the right solution was whitelisting.  Since most of the people I know don't use PGP (yet) there is no way to guarentee the sender of the messages, but from a cursory glance over my SPAM box I decided that trusting the From: header would work for 99% of today's SPAM.

    I can't set up a forwarder from a catch-all with Dreamhost, so I set it to be delivered into a mailbox.  I then created a "dummy" Gmail account to fetch this mail via POP3.  Bonus #, Gmail filters all this mail as it comes in, catching a huge amount of the illigitimate messages (just not enough of them).  Set Gmail to forward all email to singpolyma@boxbe.com (more on that in a bit) and delete.  Using Gmail as an email pipe/filter really.

    Then Boxbe.  Boxbe gives you a you@boxbe.com email address that you can forward mail to, it checks it against a whitelist, and sends it on if it matches.  Previously, if it did not match, they would reply with a "challenge" email.  This is annoying, broken, and sometimes embarassing, so I am very pleased that they have now given people the option I wanted all along.  Disable all "courtesy notifications" and turn on the report of the queue, daily.  If I receive any mail from people not on my whitelist, I get an email from Boxbe once a day summarizing who tried to contact me.  I go and let through any legitimate new people.  Perfect.

    Boxbe uses the password anti-pattern (although they're working on fixing that, they say) to import your address book.  They have a CSV importer though.  Export from Gmail, import to Boxbe.  Set up some trusted domains (like *@uwaterloo.ca) and go.

    I haven't seen SPAM since, and have only once or twice had to go over and let through a message that got stopped.

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    Creative Commons Licence © 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.
    Stephen Weber at 2008-08-13 17:22 | 1 Comment / Trackback

  2. Posting

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    So I'm almost done school YAY! didn't do too well on my final chem exam… hope I pass :S *sigh* but hey, let's not let that get me down! ;) nothing I can do about it anyway. In a few short weeks I should be done all my schoolwork… if I don't procrastinate through it all ;P Been doing a lot of code lately to keep myself busy. Chels has like two months left of grounding (don't remind me!) but I'm making it ok — one day at a time ;) uhh *thinks* the pool is open again! :D they had closed it to drain+clean+repaint it, but they're done so we can go again, so that's cool. Ah, right, the 'situation' here, I should mention that. As of right now the official word is that the rebels are licking their wounds in Soudan and the election is tomorrow. Word on the street is that they've regrouped and are 'moving south' — which means to Sahr and then here. The military in town are prepping just in case. Should be interesting, hehe. Aaaand, nothing much else happening so I'll end this post for now ;)
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    Creative Commons Licence © 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.
    Stephen Weber at 2006-05-01 23:58 | 1 Comment / Trackback
Stephen Paul Weber