Flashes of Panic

Once again, some algae is using a domain at which I get mail for fake return addresses on a spam run. Last time, it was this domain, and I turned off the catch-all address, but I’ve been using the catch-all at this other domain much longer, and consequently I’ve distributed more addresses which I might like to stay active. I’ve been getting one or two bounces a day for a while, but today the spammer got greedy and I decided to act.

So how to keep legit addresses open? I could try to remember them all… or I could write a Perl script to scan my mail directory for email addresses at that domain and return a list of all it finds, along with a tally of how many times they’re found to help me decide if a given address is a “keeper.” (Stand back, I know regular expressions!)

And now I have a list.

Technorati Tags: email, perl, regular expressions, spam