OT: I'm sick of Spam. Notice to my friends re "@yahoo.com" email addresses.

Why don't you just implement a spam filtering solution? Do you run your won server? DSpam and SpamAssassin are both good server side solutions. There are several products for sale that run on your desktop. There are also some decent capabilities built into Mozilla mail and Outlook 2003 has a patch to do spam filtering [not sure of how good it is though].

If you are going to filter .yahoo.com addresses, then consider filtering all the free email servers. Also, it would be wise to filter on the Recieved header in the email so that you can filter by MTA location rather than the from address [i.e. if I send you an email, it will not pass through Yahoo, but it does have a valid Yahoo return address].

That's what I'm trying to do.

No.

Do I need to run my own server to use them?

Well, I use Netscape, and that is the filtering that I am implementing, although there are perhaps better solutions out there. The awkward aspect of Netscape's filters is that I need to repeatedly set up the same filter over and over again for each newsgroup to which I subscribe; that is why your post managed to get through -- because I have only gotten around to setting the filter for some of my groups. I have sent a suggestion to Netscape that they correct this in a future version by adding a 'master' file of some sort, or otherwise permitting users to easily copy filters from one group to another. It is very tedious to repeatedly go through 20 different newsgroups adding a filter to delete messages about nude photos of Bart or Lisa Simpson, etc.

I have thought of that, such as 'hotmail', and it might eventually come down to that, too. I just noticed that the last several spammers had '@yahoo.com' addresses, so I am starting with that. Unfortunately, I was afraid that I'd be throwing out the baby with the bath water, i.e., I enjoy your posts, Tom, and certainly prefer not to filter you out, too. I've just looked at Netscape's filtering capability, and unfortunately it is not as versatile as it could be; it doesn't allow me to set any exceptions, such as 'delete all "@Yahoo.com" unless also containing "veldy71", etc.' That would be perfect, so I guess I'll send another suggestion to Netscape. If you or anyone else out there knows of software that will allow that, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

You are now speaking Greek to me. I don't understand enough about this stuff.

Thanks for the feedback.

Cheers.

Snip

CORRECTION! Upon looking more closely, Netscape actually does have that capability, so now I can filter out all emails coming from '@yahoo.com' EXCEPT for the ones that I choose to let through. Now it's just a matter of finding out who uses such an address, and setting the filter accordingly. I don't know whether that will be a big pain in the ass or not, but I shall try. I've also adjusted my sig file, below.

Thanks.

NOTE: Due to excessive spam, my system automatically deletes all messages from "@yahoo.com" email addresses unless you are otherwise cleared by me. If you have such an address, please tell me by sending from a different address, and I will fix my filter to clear you.

Bill Velek

Probably because it wasn't emailed to you .. but >

Pretty much. You could write your own client to interface with the DSpam libraries, but that is probably WAY beyond the level of effort that you are looking for.

I think you are making a huge mistake filter news posters because of the yahoo address they use as a return address. I am actually surprised that you care .. as most email addresses are either phony or munged anyway. I do know that I have several reasons for using a Yahoo address, and I can say mine is real [though not checked very often].

Why don't you upgrade to Mozilla for one thing? Another, you could try a more configurable news reader like Agent, XNews, etc.

If you look at the raw message posted to usenet, you will see a line that starts with "Received:" near the top of the message. There may be several of them. You can use this information to see where it came from and thus, whether it really was sent from Yahoo or not. Now that I realize you are actually filtering newsgroups and not just mail, I realize this won't be effective. Honestly, I think your approach has no hope of success as you will find yourself adding more and more rules and then trying to create more and more exceptions to those rules to fine tune them. I just implement a kill file and be done with it.

I see you're using Netscape 7.2 which is a modified version of the Mozilla browser. You might want to try the "Junk Mail Controls" instead of the "Spam Filters" first. You "train" the junk mail controls by clicking on spam and marking it "Junk". Eventually it will be able to tell junkmail from good email with about 80 percent accuracy and very few false-positives.

When you run the junk mail controls on a mail account, it will create a sub-folder called Junk. Whatever it doesn't like goes there, and will be automatically deleted after 14 days. You can change the settings if you want.

Karl S.

It's probably too late, but you could create a Yahoo account, then set your News Reader to post that account as the Reply To address in your posts, then if you ever want your email address in a post, simply enter it as billvelik at alltell dot net, or some creative variation on that. Or, create two yahoo accounts, one for catching spam, and one that you actually want to use on occasion, then physically type that into the post, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com on the few occasions when you think a poster should be contacting you offline, then check that Yahoo account once in a while.

It's a shame that you will cut off some valuable friends just because they happen to have a Yahoo account.

? I don't know. For example, this message that I'm replying to doesn't appear on my news-server/computer in rec.crafts.meadmaking, even though it still appears to have been cross-posted there. Anyway, I've now fixed the problem by having a few beers while I went through each of my groups of major interest and added all major contributors in those groups -- such as yourself -- to my address book, and now my filters are set so that any mail from either yahoo or hotmail which is not already in my address book is filtered. In the case of email, it means it is sent to my junk folder; in the case of all newsgroups, it is marked as already read, which means I will probably ignore it unless there is an unfiltered follow-up post which draws my attention to it. I was actually surprised at the large number of members of these groups who use either yahoo or hotmail addresses.

snip

I have practically no problem at all with spam in my email; just an occasional message gets through, and I just mark it as junk. I guess Netscape's feature of learning what constitutes junk must work pretty well. It's the spam in the newsgroups that ticks me off so much; it's a chronic problem in some groups, and getting worse in others, and yahoo and hotmail seem to be the worst sources of spam.

snip

I understand that Netscape is based on Mozilla, and as I've explained, it seems to work pretty well but hasn't done the trick on newsgroups.

The tedious part was adding significant posters to my address book; everything else after that was simple, and should work from this point forward. I have simply set a two-part filter for yahoo, and a separate two part filter for hotmail; each just checks to see if the sender is in my address book, and if not, then it is filtered if it is from yahoo or hotmail, as the case may be. Just two filters per newsgroup, and if I notice, from reading various threads, that a significant poster seems to be marked as read, I'll just click to add that person to my address book. I _think_ that this will work out just fine.

Perhaps you should consider using a news server other than UsenetServer. Apparently they aren't doing that good of a job with it. There is always spam in newsgroups, but a level that you indicate is not common to all servers. Might I suggest Octanews

or Giganews The former is significantly cheaper than the latter. Also, there are free news servers to read from and you just have to use a different server to post [can be easier said than done]. Check out this:

Netscape is old and always behind. Mozilla is very stable [it is what I use for email and web]. You could bleed a little and use the Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird clients as well.

See above, this probably could be mostly alleviated with a different NSP (news service provider).

Thanks, Karl. I already use the 'Junk Mail Controls'. I think I have things set now in a way that will be very satisfactory for me. If I even get the time to play with my own website and mailserver, I will probably set it up to auto-respond to messages that I am filtering. But for now, this will just have to do.

NOTE: Messages from "yahoo.com" and "hotmail.com" are filtered unless cleared by me; past correspondents, posts thru yahoo-groups, and MOST past contributing members on newsgroups to which I belong have already been cleared. Any others wanting to reach me via email are asked to send from a different address requesting future clearance. Thank you.

Bill Velek Near Little Rock, Arkansas? Visit

I switched to a provider called

Their spam filtering is pretty good.

I have been posting to this group and several others from my Yahoo account for about two years. I receive virtually no spam---maybe 2/week. Am I somehow causing others to be spammed? What's the problem with Yahoo? George

Will you lot stop cross posting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is boring!

Hi.....i'm not sure how other people use this group....I simply go to the google group winemaking page where the recent postings are listed.....I could not imagine having all these postings sent individually to my email account,with it being so active.....and yahoo mail has a wonderful bulk mail folder that throws all spam crap into for me.......yahoo been very,very good to me......Lisa and Bart Simpson nude huh?....Hmmmmmmm....any of Marge???/...I love the blue haired chicks man......later kids....andy j

It sounds like you've got things well in hand then, but watch that auto-respond stuff if it uses the "From" addy of the incoming spam. That's just asking for trouble.

Karl S.