free SpamBlocker

nobaloney

NoBaloney Internet Svcs - In Memoriam †
Joined
Jun 16, 2003
Messages
26,113
Location
California
I'm finishing up the exim.conf file for the free version of SpamBlocker tonight and will send it to John as soon as I've got it ready.

Hopefully John will see fit to integrate it into DA as he's mentioned he will look into so doing.

I'll also make it available via both ftp and html from my website.

While I'm willing to install it for a fee, I suggest you might want to wait and see how quickly John can integrate it, and a skin for it, into DirectAdmin.

There will be commercial version, with much more functionality, also available, later.

Jeff
 
Wow!!!

I can't wait to try this. Will it be available this weekend in any form? I'd gladly test and help in any way I can. I would also gladly pay for a product that helped with this torrent of spam that some of my customers have to deal with.

Also will Mailscanner/Spamassassin be affected by this?

Thanks,
Brandt
 
It should be available this weekend as an exim.conf file, annotated of course.

Then DA has said they'll be interested in writing a skin around it to give DA the anti-spam functionality.

My commercial version will also do virus filtering and perhaps we'll figure out a way to kill messages marked over a certain threshold by SpamAssassin, as well. It will also offer granularity down to the user@domain level for both blacklistng and whitelisting.

It will come with a webpage to send people to when thy're blocked, and possibly automatic whitelisting as well.

Even though we've experienced only three verified false positives in about a year and a half, we know you'll want to direct people to a page where they can get whitelisted.

For people not lucky enough to have DA, we're also offering it as a service; see the preliminary announcement here.

Jeff
 
I, for one would be thrilled to see this and test it if you need help doing so. How does it affect MailScanner/ClamAV installs though?
 
I've been delayed in getting it fiinished :( at least partly because of all the posts I've been answering here lately :) ...

but I'm actually moving along on it.

If you or your install routine made changes to the exim.conf file to install MailScanner/ClamAV, then you'll have to remake those changes to my exim.conf file; there's no such thing as a free-lunch ;) .

I'll be eventually coming out with a free anti-virus for DA as well; at that time I'll have an all-in-one exim.conf file that will work with both.

Jeff
 
Can you add feature to automatically delete and bounce emails sent from ip that is listed in spews (and that should be configurable per user)? I never received a single valid email from ips blocked by them so i think this feature would be very useful to stop huge portion of spam that i receive.
 
CyberAlien said:
Can you add feature to automatically delete and bounce emails sent from ip that is listed in spews (and that should be configurable per user)?
Delete and bounce? No. We block at the server, so there's never a message to delete.

And we don't bounce because spammers use forged headers so we'd probably bounce to an innocent third party. So no, we'd never do that.

As far as spews is concerned: I don't use them; however you can learn how to manipulate the exim.conf file, and do it yourself.

I use (very successfully, I might add):
sbl.spamhaus.org
relays.ordb.org
dnsbl.njabl.org
cbl.abuseat.org

and some (but not all) of the lists at sorbs.net

and also the rhsbl (right-hand-side blocklist at sorbs.net.

On a per-user basis? The free exim.conf file will not offer that as delivered by me.

I'll deliver it under as free a license as I can based on the exim license (I haen't checked that out yet). So anyone will be able to modify it for their own use, and possibly for distribution as well.

So you could make it work on per-user basis.

You'll be able to install the free exim.conf yourself, or pay me (or anyone else) to install it. It's likely that DA will eventually offer a control-panel based interface to my exim.conf file; they've already discussed that both with me and on these forums.

In addition I'll be offering a product (at a cost to be determined) and also several services that will offer much more functionality, including the ability to turn things on and off on a per-user basis. I'm not sure if will offer a choice of blocklists, though, since the reason for my system's effectiveness is that we change blocklists from time to time. (And no, I won't keep making changes to the free version, though I will update it if blocklists cease to exist.)
I never received a single valid email from ips blocked by them so i think this feature would be very useful to stop huge portion of spam that i receive.
You may have a good experience with SPEWS.

We'll never use them because of their stated escalation policy:

When they find a spammer they notify the ISP and block the IP#. If the IP# doesn't take action they block the entire /24 (the C-class), and if the ISP still doesn't take action they escalate the blocking to a /16. From time to time they block thousands of ISPs in a given data center or centers just because one ISP spams. We won't ever use them unless they change that policy, because we understand that unfairly blocks a lot of people who just happen to be misortunate enough to be thousands of IP#s away from a spammer.

And because our commercial service includes automatic whitelisting, and if we used them soon we'd have thousands to millions of email addresses in our whitelist system, which would make it a maintenance nightmare (currently after 15 months we have only three).

Of course you may do what you want with the file once it comes out.

If you add per-user or configurable blocklists you may have to make your own additions to the DA skin and write your own software to control those features.

Jeff
 
You're welcome.

Unfortunately I've got two servers down this morning and I'm taking time away from finishing up the exim.conf file from everything else I'm doing, so I'm going to have to stay off the forums for at least the rest of the day, and try to get things done.

Hapy <insert holiday here>!

Jeff
 
Heard to many bad things relating to SPEWS..... like blocking entire subnets due to one offending IP address, then taking weeks to have it unblocked after constant contact...

To many of them occuring, I think thats one blocklist better avoided :)

Chris
 
ProWebUK said:
Heard to many bad things relating to SPEWS..... like blocking entire subnets due to one offending IP address, then taking weeks to have it unblocked after constant contact...

To many of them occuring, I think thats one blocklist better avoided :)

Chris
Wait, you know people who actually got UNBLOCKED from Spews? Good god, that had to have taken a good bit of work.
The only time I'd use spews is in a situation like with mailscanner where you can base the rejection off of more than one rbl. They're certainly not anywhere near reliable.
 
Not directly get unblocked, rather ensuring your ISP has constant contact with them, but yes, I have seen it done numerous times, although its certainly not something they will get sorted over night for you...

Chris
 
twhiting9275 said:
The only time I'd use spews is in a situation like with mailscanner where you can base the rejection off of more than one rbl.
With exim we don't have to use mailscanner after receipt to check more than one blocklist. But we won't use Spews anyway. I've played with lists for years, and have done a real study for about 16 months, seeing a lot of change. I'm convinced I now have a set that really works, and I'm going to go with it :) .

Jeff
 
and another reason to select nobaloney.net as your administration company :) .

I haven't got this finished this weekend because of server problems one of my clients has been having (a Plesk server).

I'll finish it as soon as I can.

Jeff
 
If there's anything I hate more than SPEWS it's..ehh...hmm...nothing. About 2 years ago when I had a machine at Rackshack we used to have so much trouble with clients complaining their mails weren't getting through, just thinking about it makes me want to pull my hair out. Their policy is ridiculous and the fact that people actually use them is even more ridiculous.

Anyway, back on topic, can't wait to see your file Jeff :)!
 
Well unfortunately my cleaning person put stacks of papers into boxes this morning while I was working on a server outage, so now I have six fileboxes to go through to find all the notes I made as I was comparing files.

Some jobs just aren't meant to get done, I'm afraid.

I'll try to find everything tonight.

Jeff
 
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