3/23 A friend is going to create an email account for her small business
and post it on the net. Assuming she would get lots of spams, she
wants to know whether spam blocking at hotmail or yahoo is any good
or whether she should use a domain hosting service.
\_ Why does she want to post it on the web? Just make her a
comments form and and cgi/php script that sends her email.
Commercial spam blocking services suck ass.
\_ There are various simple b2b sites that let businesses post ads
with contact info, like a bulletin board. So it's beyond her
control. Many such sites are not spam-smart yet.
\_ I know this is not what you asked, but I highly recommend you make
some sort of "contact us!" page for the business with a HTML form,
rather than post her email address on her site. -brain
\_ Spam blocking at yahoo and hotmail is waaayyy too overzealous for
this sort of thing. I have a box set up to do
``what you want'' (TM) for email, i.e. IMAPS, non-destructive
spamassassin with well trained bayes filters, SMTP+AUTH over SSL,
redundant MX hosts, etc. As long as your friend is not going to
bandwidth hose or attract DOS attacks I would be willing to host
her email inexpensively. If your friend's business is something
cool, e.g. non-profit working to promote human rights, I'll do it
gratis. Drop me an email. -dans
\_ What method and server software do you use for SMTP+AUTH?
\_ Pretty much everyone is running Cyrus SASL for the
authentication layer. All modern MTA's that I am aware
of have the necessary plumbing to support SASL. I run
postfix, but I've also done it with sendmail (I wouldn't
want to do it again). -dans
\_ My friend is selling bio weapons to third world nations so they
can play on a level field with the evil Western powers. It is
entirely non-profit and advances the rights of women and the poor
in the third world. What do I need to do to get a free account?
\_ One meellion dollars in small, unmarked, non-consecutively
numbered bills. -dans
\_ Thanks. Are you running a commercial hosting service? Is there
any commercial hosting service that does it? (presummably with
a shell account?)
\_ No, I am not running a commercial hosting service. I just
happen to have several boxes set up to do this, and offer
service to friends, family, and friends of friends. Mostly
it is an evil ploy to get my friends off of shitty webmail
services like Hotmail and Yahoo so I don't ever have to
update my address book, resend messsages when they bounce due
to quota, etc... In particular, email account != shell
account on my boxes. Most people don't need shell accounts,
and most people lack the clue to use a shell account in a
responsible manner that won't compromise system security.
-dans
\_ I guess that is why almost no low cost hosting service
offers a shell account. But if I have a domain hosted
with email acct., is there a way to route the incoming
emails there first to a place where I have shell acct.,
say soda, filtered it w. spamassassin, and then route
back to that domain?
\_ No, I think it's mostly that shell accounts aren't in
wide demand. ftp is sufficient for most people's needs
so it's not cost effective to provide shell accounts.
You *can* route it to a place with a shell account and
filter it with spamassassin, probably easiest to do
with /etc/aliases, which I can set up. Pushing it back
to the original box is tricky to do without creating
mail loops. Of course, if you read what I wrote,
you'll note that my box is already running
spamassassin. Also, I've got my box set up to allow
mail filtering without a shell via sieve. -dans
\_ I have a yahoo account, and I seem to get a lot less spam than my
family and friends who use hotmail. |