[conspire] I get mail

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Don Marti (dmarti at zgp.org):

> begin Rick Moen quotation of Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 01:06:09PM -0700:
> 
> > :r /usr/share/procmail-lib/response-auto.txt
> 
> Any spam/abuse protection measures on that
> autoresponder that you're able to talk about and
> interested in explaining?

Yeah, I do worry about that, with the bad example of innumerable
people's vacation / out-of-office responders to learn from.  Here's the
current, crude procmail recipe:

:0 Whc: /var/lock/respond.lock

| ( formail -r -A"X-Loop: respond-auto at linuxmafia.com" \
                -I"From: Mr. Autoresponder <nobody at linuxmafia.com>" \
                -I"Subject: How to Ask Questions the Smart Way"; \
                cat /usr/share/procmail-lib/response-auto.txt) |
/usr/sbin/sendmail -t



The first obvious un-met need is for flood-protection on it, so that it
couldn't be used to mailbomb any one claimed sending address.  I'd 
do that, if I could figure out how.  

Since my procmail-fu is not very strong, I've mostly relied on my MTA's
very well-developed abuse rejection, and hope that the result is not
significantly vulnerable.  (In my experience, attempting to detect Joe
Jobs, etc., _after_ MTA acceptance is hopeless, and so must be done at
SMTP time.  My MTA's very good at that, but not perfect, for reasons
inherent in current SMTP.)  

Although I know it's a poor excuse for not testing the thing thoroughly
myself, I can at least say it's garnered not a single complaint.