My e-mail setup right now for n1zyy.com and ttwagner.com consists of just forwarding all e-mail to GMail. It works fine, and the spam filters there have been pretty much 100% effective. However, it bothers me that I’m forwarding dozens, if not hundreds, of e-mails just to have them ignored. Some basic spam filtering should really take place on my server.

I made a few basic configuration changes to Postfix, the MTA I run. In a nutshell, I tell it to require stricter compliance with e-mail RFCs: e-mails with HELO addresses that don’t exist (or just don’t make sense), and people sending multiple commands before the server replies to acknowledge them, for example, now results in mail delivery failing. The default configuration errs very much on the side of ‘safety’ in accepting mail, but the trick is to tighten it down enough that you’ll reject mail that’s egregious spam, but not reject anything that could be from a mailserver. And that’s where I’m at.

I also installed SpamAssassin. I’m currently using it in conjunction with procmail, and therefore wasn’t quite sure if it works. I set it up to make some changes to the headers, so that I can verify whether it’s working. But I ran into a problem I never thought I’d have: I’m not getting enough spam. I’m sitting here eagerly awaiting some to see what happens. And it’s just not coming.