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List:       spamassassin-users
Subject:    Re: How to deal with SPAM to system process usernames
From:       David B Funk <dbfunk () engineering ! uiowa ! edu>
Date:       2004-04-30 21:03:27
Message-ID: Pine.HPX.4.58.0404301553550.28556 () d-is00 ! icaen ! uiowa ! edu
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On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Henry Leparskas wrote:

> I notice that spam has been arriving and accumulating in the inboxes for various
> unix users such as the 'listen' and the 'adm' users.
>
> Is there a good way to deal with this by blocking it somehow? So, should they be
> on a blacklist?
>
> Thanks,
> Henry

For system process usernames there should be one of three possible
configurations:
1) Block at the MTA level
2) Alias to somebody who -does- read mail
3) feed to a spamtrap mailbox

2) should be used for identities that may well get legitmate messages.
For example, you've got a cronjob that runs as 'adm' to process some
kind of logs/accounting info, and if it errors out it will send mail
to 'adm', then you want somebody (root?) to see it.

Depending upon your flavor of Unix, the cron daemon may send mail to
the designated user if there's some problem running a cron job.
For example, you've got a cronjob that runs as 'adm' and cron fails
to start it because of a full disk partition, then cron may send a
mail message to 'adm' (you would want to see those).

Depending upon your MTA, it may be possible to route locally generated
system process messages to a real (root?) user, and block/discard
remotely sent ones.


-- 
Dave Funk                                  University of Iowa
<dbfunk (at) engineering.uiowa.edu>        College of Engineering
319/335-5751   FAX: 319/384-0549           1256 Seamans Center
Sys_admin/Postmaster/cell_admin            Iowa City, IA 52242-1527
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
Better is not better, 'standard' is better. B{
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