if you are running pop3 and smtp and wish to allow others to have an email address using your service out side of your local network you may run into a problem; relaying should be disallowed for others out side of your private network, so how do you allow someone with an account that you gave them to use your mail service, without opening your server to be an open relay for anyone who wants to abuse it? this website: http://popbsmtp.sourceforge.net/

provides a great perl utility that will look at successful pop3 logins and then create a temporary database with that users ipaddress and user name. with that you can set your mail server, (postfix, sendmail...) to look at the database and will allow mail relaying for those that have successful pop3 logins. this utility works with various pop3 servers, and the website includes detailed instructions on just exactly how to set it up. all youll hav eto do i tell your users to CHECK their mail first before they try to send it.

Thanks Norsk!

That is a great tip! Just the kind of great antispam technique this special topic forum needs. I have never heard of 'POP before SMTP'...

My mother (a grandmother and savvy net user) has been on the net (doing email) since 1992 and now says, for her, the Internet is "not fun anymore' because of the mountains of spam she receives.

I think spam is the number one problem on the net today...... recently I was overseas in an Internet kiosk and spent most of my 'on-line' time deleting a thousand junk message that accumlated over a day in airports and planes.....

Thanks! Neo

dont mention it
i forgot where i found that , i think it might have been on here. anyway it really is a great utility, and the instructions on the website are really very easy to follow. aside from making sure your email server isnt an open relay, other steps to prevent gettting spam is to just not give our your email address. i recieve minimal spam, maybe one or 2 every 3 weeks. a big thing i think is that people really dont think twice about giving out their email address. people sign up for contests to win $1000000 and dont realize that they are selling your address to ad. companies. another preventative tip is whenever you post your email on message boards, or irc channels, or on website is to NOT include the '@' sign, instead just use the word 'at' eg: nobody at example.com
also, whenever i recieve spam that i am positive i didnt give the senders my address, if i have the time ill send them a polite email requesting that they take my address of of their send list and that sometimes helps. anyway , hope all that helps!