Re: [cobalt-users] excessive spam

[Parker Morse <morse@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday, Jul 16, 2003, at 09:37 US/Eastern, Dan Kriwitsky wrote:
> Unfortunately, having a catchall is another thing stolen by spammers. I
> don't use many of the standard addresses such as webmaster, info, 
> sales,
> etc. on my Cobalt. I haven't looked into the configuration of Sendmail
> on the Cobalt so that it doesn't confirm addresses either.

Expanding a bit on Dan's advice: To ensure that your sendmail is not 
confirming email addresses, check the following:

In your sendmail.mc (located in /usr/lib/sendmail-cf/ on my Qube3, 
YMMV) verify that you have the line "define(`confPRIVACY_FLAGS', 
`goaway')dnl" (minus my double quotes) in the "general options" 
section. If you've got a different value for confPRIVACY_FLAGS, change 
it. Regenerate your sendmail.cf as usual (see 
<http://bluebird.sinauer.com/~morse/cobalt/dnsbl.html> for details if 
you don't know how to do this.)

If you don't do sendmail.mc and prefer to work directly on sendmail.cf, 
find the line which begins

O PrivacyOptions=

and make sure that reads

o PrivacyOptions=goaway

"goaway" is a shorthand value which includes the options 
"authwarnings", "noexpn", "novrfy", "needmailhelo", "needexpnhelo", and 
"needvrfyhelo", which (roughly in order) enables the 
X-Authentication-Warning: header, disables the SMTP EXPN and VRFY 
commands, and requires an SMTP HELO (or EHLO) before allowing the MAIL 
command.

This is not likely to stop much spam, but it does make things a bit 
less easy for the spammers. Much like locking your car doors - it may 
not prevent a theft, but at least the thief has to work a bit.

By the way, I find the subject line of this thread amusing. Isn't 
"excessive spam" redundant?

pjm