maybe a beginner's question

[Luca <lu...@cyberonic.com>]

joined this group today as i wasn't lucky getting help from my ISP, who 
aired a "cant' do nothing about spam" attitude, want's to keep a zero 
false positive level.... so does nothing.

my mail is   luca@cyberonic.com

i am getting tons of mail (spam) addressed to: bdavidson@cyberonic.com 
into my inbox.
there's no cc or bcc headers or any other email address in the message. 
(my address is NOT in msg)

1. what exactly is happening here, step-by-step?

2. seems to me, that one could filter so i get only messages addressed 
to luca@cyberonic.com.
is that correct?


thanks for helping the newbie
/luca



(xx@cyberonic.com, where xx is a variable,  different rotating single 
addresses, one per mail (not bulk, cc or bcc)


==============================================full example header
 From gwiliwia@velnet.co.uk Sun Apr 17 16:47:31 2005
Return-Path: <gw...@velnet.co.uk>
Received: from 4.17.179.4 ([218.234.165.57])
	by localhost.localdomain (8.12.8/8.12.8) with SMTP id j3HLGDvn022564;
	Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:16:14 -0400
Received: from barrett (surgical.silesnet.cz [134.96.36.40])
	by fructose.silesnet.cz (8.11.6/8.11.6) with QSMTP id g7SG7t021563
	for <li...@velnet.co.uk>; Mon, 18 Apr 2005 01:35:39 +0400
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:43:39 -0500
From: "Abigail Elkins" <gw...@velnet.co.uk>
Message-Id: <01...@velnet.co.uk>
To: bdavidson@cyberonic.com
Subject: MultiMedia Sector CSGU Announces...
X-Mailer: Mailman v2.0.8
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Status:

Re: maybe a beginner's question

[Matt Kettler <mk...@comcast.net>]

At 10:11 PM 4/20/2005, Luca wrote:
>i am getting tons of mail (spam) addressed to: bdavidson@cyberonic.com 
>into my inbox.
>there's no cc or bcc headers or any other email address in the message. 
>(my address is NOT in msg)
>
>1. what exactly is happening here, step-by-step?

Mail is delivered by the envelope recipient, not by the To: line inside the 
message. Technicaly, the To: line you commonly see in a mail client is not 
intended to be used to indicate where to deliver mail. It's just a 
decorative part of the message.

Consider this the difference between the greeting line at the top of a 
letter, and the address on the outside of the envelope. The post office 
doesn't open mail to know where to deliver it. They use the address on the 
envelope. Mailservers do the same thing. As messages are delivered from 
server to server an electronic "envelope" precedes the message, indicating 
who the recipients are.

This envelope mechanism is how Bcc works. Your mail client automatically 
removes that header from the message, but adds the addresses into the 
envelope it generates when you send the message to a mailserver.

Envelopes are also important to how mailing lists work. When I mail 
users@spamassassin.apache.org, the apache mailserver resends a copy of the 
message with different envelopes for all the subscribers of the list. The 
message is still addressed To: users@spamassassin.apache.org, but copies 
are resent to many.


>2. seems to me, that one could filter so i get only messages addressed to 
>luca@cyberonic.com.
>is that correct?

Well, as long as you don't ever expect to get mail from a mailing list of 
any sort, and don't ever get email that anyone sends using Bcc: you are 
correct. However, very few people can make this claim, and since you're a 
subscriber of this list, I'm fairly sure you're not one of the few.

Personally, on my mail client side, I do use this tactic to limited effect.

First I filter messages so that all mail via mailing lists is moved to 
various list mailboxes. Mail from any of my friends is moved to a "friends" 
box. From what remains, any messages not addressed To: or Cc: me are moved 
into a mailbox I call Limbo, and those which are stay in my inbox.

Realisticly, this tactic doesn't work very well anymore. It worked better 
in the past, but now it grabs only about half my spam, and a few 
newsletters I want like announcements from my bank wind up here, along with 
the occasional bcc'ed email from a friend announcing they are moving to all 
their friends.

Re: maybe a beginner's question

[Robert Menschel <Ro...@Menschel.net>]

Hello Luca,

Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 7:11:32 PM, you wrote:

L> joined this group today as i wasn't lucky getting help from my ISP, who
L> aired a "cant' do nothing about spam" attitude, want's to keep a zero
L> false positive level.... so does nothing.

Sounds like you need a new ISP.

L> my mail is   luca@cyberonic.com

If for some reason you're stuck with Cyberonic, then you can get a new
email address with another system that does nothing but host email for
you, and will use SpamAssassin to filter that email.

You'll probably have to pay a little for that service, but if you are
stuck otherwise, it can be worth it. I can send you a recommendation
off-list if you want.

L> i am getting tons of mail (spam) addressed to: bdavidson@cyberonic.com
L> into my inbox.
L> there's no cc or bcc headers or any other email address in the message.
L> (my address is NOT in msg)

L> 2. seems to me, that one could filter so i get only messages addressed
L> to luca@cyberonic.com.
L> is that correct?

What software are you using on your computer?  If your software is
capable enough, then yes, you should be able to teach it to filter
your messages so
a) messages to your specific address, in the To: or Cc: header, are
delivered normally.
b) messages from mailing lists you participate in (like this one) are
delivered normally.
c) messages to anythingelse@cyberonic.com AND NOT to your address are
dumped immediately.
d) all other messages are set aside into a folder where you can review
them to make sure you don't miss anything else important.

Since we don't know what email software you use on your computer,
nobody can make recommendations on how to do that (at least not yet).


Bob Menschel