Blocking specific email addresses

[Richard Gaskin]

Joe Lewis Wilkins wrote:
> I'm desperate. For the past two weeks I have been receiving nearly 500  
> spam email messages from a single address every day. My ISP is Cox and  
> they can't help me because I use Macs. They are currently sent to my  
> trash, but I don't even want to deal with them at all. Anyone know how  
> to block a specific email address so that it doesn't even show up  
> anywhere? I'm using Apple's Mail on an Intel Mac with Leopard.

Short term:

The best place to stop spam is on the server, saving your time and the 
Internet's resources in your downloading it.

Most ISPs provide customizable filtering mechanisms for that, usually 
with a convenient UI in their Control Panel.  I use Dreamhost, Bluehost, 
and TierraNet for most of my domains, and all of them provide such 
filtering tools (they all also support Rev CGI in their web space, FWIW).


Long term:

Spam can be forwarded to uce at fcc.gov, where ostensibly it is cataloged 
for possible future action.  Details are provided here: 
<http://www.ftc.gov/spam/>

But the history of that agency is one of inaction, and whether it's 
willful complicity with the spammers, budget constraints, or simple 
ineptitude, they have demonstrated themselves to be irrelevant in any 
real efforts to fight spam. (They're welcome to prove me wrong at any 
time, but last year's Florida shut-down rather makes my case clear.)

Far more effective is the work of a single individual with a strong 
sense of mission and some good programming skills:  Knujon ("nojunk" 
spelled backwards):

<http://www.knujon.com/>

The fine gentleman who runs that site has come up with a system to 
automate the cataloging and reporting of spam to the web hosts who 
provide space for the sites advertised.

To date Kunjon.org has shut down more than 200,000 spam sites, orders of 
magnitude more than all of the efforts of everyone at the US FCC combined.

But to do this he needs your spam.  No really:  he wants everyone to 
send spammail to his input address so his robots and chew it over and 
send out notices to the relevant web hosts.

He provides a convenient Firefox plugin, just one of at least a hundred 
reasons to consider switching to this free best-of-breed mail client.

But even without that convenience, even manually forwarded emails can be 
helpful, and if your ISP's control panel provides a tool for this you 
may even be able to have filtered mails forwarded automatically (though 
that should be done with caution to avoid false positives going to the 
antispambots).


--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com