On Sat, 26 Jan 2002, Shannon wrote:

> spamcop quite a bit and haven't seen it pick out an innocent mail
> address or IP yet. It merely tracks the path the email took and seems to
> do a good job. I wish it were an open project though, and had a few more
> options, and was not a web application.

How would it be different if it was an open project? (Or why do you wish
it is an open project?)

(I am interested, because I'd like to help with an open project for
providing community-submitted and reviewed spam filters.)

> Are you sure about that?  Most SPAM headers are obfuscated, but in the
> end the various MTAs have to leave their mark somewhere in the
> headers.

The spammer's MTA doesn't have to include anything. So then the only mark
will be the originating IP (and maybe hostname) as recorded by your MTA.

I receive most of my spam via open (anyone can post) mailing lists.

For the past six months, I have blocked around 25 spams each day by
building my own exim filter rules -- such as blackholing emails that have
non-conformant message-id's.

I have been building a list of spam (and virus) filtering projects and
software at http://www.reedmedia.net/misc/mail/filters.html
(I just counted 28 projects.)

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://www.reedmedia.net/

p.s. for the original poster: have a look at
http://bsd.reedmedia.net/Software/Servers/SMTP_Mail/POP3_Authenticated_Relaying/