Feedback and a couple of enhancement ideas

Hi all,

I've been using ASK with enhanced tabular HTML queue reports for a while 
now.  I've been finding them fantastic.  If anyone expresses interest I 
will post my modifications.

Secondly, I have thought of a few (possibly old) ideas for additional 
methods of reducing unnecessary spam challenges;

1. if the MTA that sent the mail is the same as any of the IP addresses 
that the MX record for the mail being set to resolves, then 
auto-whitelist the address, unless it was on the blacklist.  This 
feature would have a lifetime; it is possible that eventually the 
obvious (non-trivial) holes that exist in this idea would be exploited 
by spammers.  However, this would mean that in the meantime, people who 
are SMTP-AUTH'ing like everyone should be :-) would not be sent annoying 
e-mails by ASK.

2. if ASK can be pointed at a DBM file containing a list of sent Message 
IDs, then:
   - automatically respond to other ASK messages for messages we know we 
sent sent
   - drop confirmation messages that do not contain a References: header 
to known sent Message IDs

3. publish the above as a best practice method for spam blockers, so 
that if Challenge/Response spam blocking explodes, we won't be left in a 
muddle of challenge/response madness worse than the original problem.

If you can change the inevitable "why the hell are you spamming me" 
message that many, often gifted, SysAdmins will send you to a "well, use 
SMTP Auth, and as you can see, this is a solution for all", then that is 
definitely a good thing.

-- 
Sam Vilain, sam /\T vilain |><>T net, PGP key ID: 0x05B52F13
(include my PGP key ID in personal replies to avoid spam filtering)



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