[Techtalk] simple mail filtering via whitelist - suggestions?

[Travis Casey]

On Saturday 06 March 2004 01:43, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
> On 05/03/04 18:58 -0500, Travis Casey wrote:

(apologies to Devdas for the multiple copies... forgot to "reply to mailing 
list" instead of just "reply" the first time)

> > What I'd like to do is create a "whitelist" of approved senders, and
> > let mail from them go on to her.  Anything from someone else would be
> > redirected to me.
>
> How are you accessing the mail? Are you running your own server? Or are
> you pulling via fetchmail?

I'm running exim for the MTA; I've got a static IP and have my server
registered with DNS -- email on it has been working for months.  (Which is
part of how she got an email account... she'd been asking for one, and I
realized a week or so ago that she already *has* one... her account on my
machine is by default capable of receiving email.)

I've installed Qpopper so she can get to the email from the Windows box
she's used to using for her games.

All elements are tested and working right now; I can send email to her from
"the outside world" and she gets it, and I can reply from her account and
it makes it back.

BTW, I also know very little about exim; the only reason I'm using it is
because it's the default with Debian, and since it works, I haven't
bothered to change it.  I have some familiarity with both postfix and
sendmail, though, so I doubt it would be hard to learn.

> > I know of procmail and maildrop, but I've never used either of them, so
> > I don't know how easy setting up something like this would be with
> > either one, and they both seem kind of like overkill for a simple
> > whitelist.
>
> Its fairly easy with procmail. Might be easier if you run your own MTA.

I am, and am willing to mess with configuration files... and to read
 manuals and web pages, if someone can help me find the right ones.  :-)

I've googled already, and found a ton of stuff on blocking spam with
procmail... but nothing that showed how to simply do *just* a whitelist.

My domain doesn't appear to be a target for spammers right now... I have
four accounts on here, plus all the standard addresses (root, postmaster,
news, etc), and none of them have received any spam in the 6+ months this
box has been a mail server.  I'm just trying to be proactive, figuring it
can only be a matter of time until some spammer notices that DNS record and
starts trying random names...

--

       |\      _,,,---,,_     Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>

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