Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:20573 comp.mail.misc:2933
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!spdcc!ima!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Help!
Summary: mail->news hack
Keywords: Unwanted mail
Message-ID: <106@minya.UUCP>
Date: 13 Feb 90 03:50:59 GMT
References: <1856@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Followup-To: comp.mail.misc
Lines: 28

In article <1856@milton.acs.washington.edu>, simstim@milton.acs.washington.edu ([]) writes:
> I have been experiencing a little problem with various individuals
> sending me a substansial amount of unwanted email. Does anyone have
> a good hack to refuse email from particular users?
 
Some time ago I implemented a rather neat hack (if I may say so) that
solved such problems in an interesting way.  I converted incoming mail
from several mailers into news, so that, for instance, my mail was sent
to the to.jc newsgroup, which was at the head of my .newsrc file.  The
news directory was owned by the user, read/write by the user and the
news group, and write-only to the rest of the world.

The rn users especially liked this hack; it meant that their kill file
could be used to ignore mail from known junk-mail sources, occasionally 
including much of the local bureaucracy.

Of course, I didn't carry the code away with me.  I've occasionally
wished I had, given the klutzy mailers on most systems.  On the other
hand, it wouldn't be hard to do it again.  Go ahead...

(Let's see, there's gotta be some problem with this approach; else why
are mailers and news kept apart everywhere?  I assume someone will tell
me why this is an idiotic idea.  ;-)

-- 
John Chambers ...!{harvard,ima,mit-eddie}!minya!jc

[Sorry, no clever saying today.]