Geekblok

Spamcop isn’t a new or web2.0′ish website, but I’m always amazed that a lot of geeks haven’t heard of it before, so I decided to post a little something on Spamcop and how to effectively set it up with mutt (yeah, that geeky mail client).

Spamcop is a website that can help you report spam. Simply forward/bounce emails to a special mail address. After they have received the message, their software will determine where the email came from and who should be contacted. You can simply look through their “investigation” and if all is ok, report the spam. Why should you do this, instead of simply ignoring spam? The main reason, of course, is to get spammers disconnected from whatever source they’re using. But besides that, Spamcop is running a rather popular DNSBL (DNS BlackBlock List). This may even be used by your mail provider!

Tracing headers and finding out the source of the spam can be rather dull work, especially if you receive a lot of spam mails. So why not outsource that process to Spamcop? The beauty is that they also trace the spamvertized URLs and the responsible people for that will also be included in the report.

To make it as easy as possible, I’ve used some macros in mutt. First of all, sign up with Spamcop to get your submit mail address. Then grab the perl script and put it anywhere on your system (put the submit mail address in there). After that, simply add this line to your “.muttrc”:
macro index 'S' "<tag-prefix><pipe-entry>/path/reporter.pl\n<tag-prefix><delete-message>"

Now, when you receive a spam message, simply select it in mutt and press SHIFT + ‘S’. The message will be forwarded to Spamcop and you’ll delete it straight away. When Spamcop finishes processing the mail, they’ll inform you by mail and give you a link with all the details. Go there (or use WWW::Mechanize::SpamCop what I personally do not recommend) and check the results. If you’re happy with the results, submit the form and you’re done. You’ve just helped the world to become a better, spam-free place.

Do you, in any way, already contribute to spam-fighting?

Many people face the problem of handling e-mails efficiently. There is no right or wrong way to handle e-mail, but some methods just are a little easier to work with than others.

A lot of people ask me how I handle all my e-mails. In this post I’ll describe my setup. It’s far from perfect, but for me it works and it might work for you too.

I’m a Linux geek, so I use a CLI mail agent, named mutt. This simple yet powerful piece of software is wisely described as:

All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.

As funny as it might sound, it’s true. After using PINE for a long time, I’ve switched to mutt and never looked back. The interface is powerful and it does close to everything you’d want your mail client to do. Other things, like filtering the mail, I do with a custom script using Mail::Audit (yes, I should use Email::Filter). I prefer a custom Perl script over procmail for I have difficulty grasping the procmail way of writing filters and rules. It just seems too complicated to me. Mail::Audit is a lot more simple, as we’ll see in a minute.

Ok, now that we know the tools we’re working with, let’s look at how I hook it all up.

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