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.