Comments on: Mail Processing Tools http://commavee.com/2005/03/21/mail-processing-tools/ from John Minnihan, founder of Freepository. Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:00:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: John Minnihan http://commavee.com/2005/03/21/mail-processing-tools/comment-page-1/#comment-2 John Minnihan Tue, 19 Apr 2005 13:13:06 +0000 http://leadville.jbminn.com/commavee/?p=4#comment-2 I've been monitoring spam (thanks to the fantastic Mailwatch application) and see that it is now closer to 64% rather than the earlier 83-88%. The overall amount of mail processed is dropping as well, so I conclude that my filtering and active blocking of known spammers is working. I also run portsentry on my systems, and this actively blocks (via tcpwrappers) attempts to scan my system(s) for open ports. The old SYN/Normal scan? I catch this every time, and I am convinced that it has decreased the amount of spam I receive. These new numbers reflect messages <i>processed</i>, and so the stuff that is blocked prior to Spamassassin isn't counted. So more real messages are being processed, as a percentage of total messages, now. And That is a Good Thing (tm). I’ve been monitoring spam (thanks to the fantastic Mailwatch application) and see that it is now closer to 64% rather than the earlier 83-88%. The overall amount of mail processed is dropping as well, so I conclude that my filtering and active blocking of known spammers is working. I also run portsentry on my systems, and this actively blocks (via tcpwrappers) attempts to scan my system(s) for open ports. The old SYN/Normal scan? I catch this every time, and I am convinced that it has decreased the amount of spam I receive.

These new numbers reflect messages processed, and so the stuff that is blocked prior to Spamassassin isn’t counted. So more real messages are being processed, as a percentage of total messages, now. And That is a Good Thing ™.

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