[TAG] [OT] Interesting interview

[Ben Okopnik]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 04:38:05PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> (Although I try not to rely on secrecy for effectiveness of antispam
> measures, it's probably best not to publish this subthread about
> postings being blocked by my antispam filters or not.  Because I'd
> rather not publish the regexes, you see.)

No problem; we have just the excision and cauterization tools required
for the job (Kat's previous bio pic, in which she was holding a giant
pair of scissors, would be highly apropos here.)

For future reference, there's actually a couple of tags that can be used
here (TAG tags?) to either keep the content from being published or to
keep it from being processed by our mailbag script.
 
[PRIVATE]
This paragraph will be elided from the processed output. Poof, gone,
bye-bye, it's an ex-paragraph from the land of Never-Was.
[/PRIVATE]

[RAW]
<em>This</em> paragraph won't be converted by the script but will be
used <strong>raw</strong>, thus preserving the formatting instead of
displaying the HTML tags as text. All this formatting stuff is, of
course, documented in the <a
href="http://linuxgazette.net/faq/members-faq.html">TAG FAQ</a>. 
[/RAW]

(As I'm sure everyone is aware, this kind of thing is hard to remember
and easy to forget - so all I can do is keep bringing it up when the
occasion offers.)

[PRIVATE]
> $ grep Monitoring /etc/exim4/eximconfig/messages/reasons
> SPAM_MONITOR    Monitoring/spyware software or removal tools spam.
> 
> $ grep SPAM_MONITOR /etc/exim4/eximconfig/reject/subject
> ^.*(ad|spy)ware.*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*get.*(famil|employ|parent).*password.*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*learn.*everything.*about.*your.*friend.*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*spy.*on.*(pc|people).*at.*(home|office|work).*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*spy.*on.*anyone.*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*spy.*on.*your.*(boy|girl|lover|man|woman).*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*spy.*software.*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> ^.*what.*your.*(wife|husband|child).*do.*on.*internet.*\N$
> SPAM_MONITOR
> $
[/PRIVATE]

[list of regexes elided] Nice. Anyone using Mutt, or any other MUA
that lets you hook program execution to actions within the MUA, could
construct a "subject checker" that will either warn you (I'm not sure
how you'd implement that one, though) or modify the subject
automatically so that it no longer matches these. 

However, to quote the oh-so-quotable Dubbya (from the Gibson interview
about his upcoming retirement):

``
[...] wouldn't it be interesting for baby boomers not to retire in nice
places, but to retire -- during their retirement, go help people deal
with malaria or AIDS?

[...] I'm not suggesting that's what I'm going to do, but it is the kind
of thing that intrigues me.
''

Good luck to all you regex-wranglers out there. :)


-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *