AppleScript for spam reporting
The US Federal Trade Commission is building a database of spam emails 
to help it “pursue law enforcement actions against people who send deceptive email”.
Whatever the pros and cons of the actual CAN-SPAM legislation, this can only be a good thing.
If you want to help out, you can use an AppleScript posted on macOSXHints which makes reporting the spam you receive easier.
It will forward selected spam emails to the FTC. The MacOSXHints tip includes the script itself and some instructions for its use.
Tags: Apple Mail, applescript, CAN-SPAM, FTC, mail.app, spamRelated posts
February 24th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
Keep in mind that if the spam has a legitimate opt-out policy listed and there is evidence that it actually works, then they’re not going to do anything with the messages you forward to them.
If you get a lot of spam (I archive my mail at GMail; it has received 1306 spam messages since January 27, and GMail is REALLY AWFUL at catching spam) and are really fed up about it, you should start getting serious about spam. Stop waiting for others to stop it for you.
Nancy McGough has a pretty good tutorial on “Reverse Spam Filtering”:
http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/spam/
and Catherine Hampton has put together a terrific set of procmail scripts that do a great job filtering spam:
http://www.spambouncer.org/
Additionally, you can forward messages that she doesn’t catch back to a special address she maintains and she’ll add them to the next release (releases come out pretty quickly too).
And finally, there’s always SpamProbe which is very easy to setup and train. It does a good job catching the special spam that the rest of these don’t catch.
http://spamprobe.sourceforge.net/
Really the latter two links are somewhat encapsulated into the first link. If you’re really serious, you’ll keep greenlists and pinklists and bluelists and all of the other types of lists that Nancy lists.
The trouble with all of this is that most good anti-spam solutions involve advanced server-based filtering on an IMAP server. Client-side solutions just don’t cut it if you get a lot of spam.
February 26th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Great links. Thanks.
The problem with these sorts of additional spam-fighting tips and scripts is simple useability.
How many “normal” users are going to run procmail scripts? What’s the solution for people who are serious about spam but understandably take fright at something like Nancy’s procmail Quick Start tutorial?
February 27th, 2006 at 2:19 am
Yeah, I realize this. But in that case, there’s not much those people can do. I’m saying if you really want to get serious about fighting spam, you may have to learn a few new tricks.
Really though, a MAJOR step toward fighting spam is starting to take your e-mail seriously and actually start paying for quality e-mail service. There are good providers out there (Nancy lists a bunch at
http://www.ii.com/internet/messaging/imap/isps/
and even has five or six of her own recommendations) that have fantastic spam measures already setup to protect you. On top of this, they have built easy to use user interfaces to do complex things (like setting up procmail or Sieve filters).
Most importantly, paying someone for e-mail access means that you get support. Getting through to Google can take months if you have a problem. However, if you’re working with a company smaller than Google that you are paying for support, you can phone someone up and talk to them and have them work with you to fix your troubles. You can build a relationship with them.
So that’s really the first and often the most significant step… If you’re serious about e-mail, then start paying for real e-mail service. And don’t just pay anyone — shop around for a place that takes things like spam seriously. Finding a good e-mail (and hosting!) provider can be just like finding a good automechanic or attorney.
(and on a more practical note, find a provider that gives you IMAP access. That gives you a central way to access a backup of all e-mail important to you already organized into all its folders. Plus, they’ll probably do nightly backups and store your mail on highly available file servers so that there will be little to no chance that they’ll ever lose your data)