JunkSpy On The Server Side

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Junk Spy on the Server Side!

Scenario 1: At home you use an OS/2-eCS computer for all the family or you have a LAN with a number of machines (preferably all OS/2-eCS but maybe not).

Scenario 2: you operate a SOHO business using an OS/2-eCS machine OR on a LAN with other machines OS/2, eCS even Windows :(.

Objective: You want to collect all the mail from your ISP (cable/DSL/dialup) mail server, and distribute it around the LAN, whilst controlling the spam at the earliest possible point in the data stream.

At home that may mean scanning individual addresses for family members, at work it could include aliases like "sales" "enquiries" "purchases" "webmaster" and mail for individual staff.

If you don't have a fixed IP address, it's not possible to totally displace your ISP and become your own mail server. But never fear, this workaround depends on having an ISP, and much is still possible!

Using POP for receiving, and setting up a local mail server on one machine, you can filter junk mail out of your incoming stream, something like this:

ISP Mail Service ---> Junk Spy ---> Postie ----> Weasel local server Accounts ---> distribute over LAN to email programs such as PMMail, PolarBar, MR/2-ICE, Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird), Netscape Mail etc

Software (naturally you can choose other products, but this is what we use): JunkSpy from Sundial Systems (www.junkspy.com/) currently v2.02 with online updates to 31 July 2003 Weasel Mail Server from Peter Moylan (See Hobbes and its mirrors or http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au/os2 Standard level is free for personal use; Professional version requires a registration fee) v1.64 POPget is a utility available with Weasel for collecting mail from an upstream Pop mail-server. My son Christopher and I have modified it to retrieve mail for multiple accounts. To avoid confusion we have called our version POSTIE.CMD

Steps required

1. Establish mail accounts on your ISP service. Many ISPs offer mail account management facilities but if you can't do it yourself, ask your ISP to set them up. You have probably already done this, only to discover that JunkSpy was not protecting the other accounts you created.
2. Modify Postie to collect mail for those accounts (make account names and passwords to match step 1) but to operate through Junk Spy, so it looks to JunkSpy as if Postie is your mail client NB: because this is a workaround using a client program, multiple JunkSpy licences are required - one for each person who receives mail. However, the wonderful people at Sundial are very accommodating about multiple licences, so this should not be a major issue - financial or operational.
3. Set up the Junk Spy Post Office
   • the default POP3 server is not required
   • the "listening port" is 1100 (anything from 1024 to 65536 is possible I think) to communicate with Postie JunkSpy can now collect incoming mail from your ISP on (standard) port 110. then send it via (non-standard) port 1100 to Postie ie, Postie collects mail from Junkspy on port 1100, and passes it to Weasel server. Putting JunkSpy on 1100 allows Weasel to claim port 110 locally - if JunkSpy and Weasel are on different computers, they could both use port 110 (though it's probably safest to put JunkSpy on a non-standard port in case people try to [ab]use it from the other end of the transmission channel).
4. Set up Weasel to provide local accounts for your family members/office staff
   • Only set up real accounts for the users who will retrieve mail PLUS one Junk account
   • Weasel can handle aliases - in the Aliases tab set up the mail name from the ISP (eg. webmaster) and redirect it to the real account (eg. Fred)
   • Alias names must be set up in Postie to collect the mail and pass it on to Weasel
   • Setup port 110 (default) to receive incoming POP mail from Postie
   • Weasel set up of other parameters is well documented (Although I am familiar with Weasel only - hence I have used it for this illustration - I have no doubt that other mail servers can do exactly the same things).
5. Operate your own mail clients (eg. PMMail) to retrieve mail from Weasel accounts
6. The Weasel server administrator will need to check the Junk account folder regularly to
   • clear out genuine junk mail and
   • move non-junk mail flagged in error to the appropriate account. JunkSpy will then need to be advised by bouncing the mail to 'nojunk@junkspy.com' (see JunkSpy documentation)
   • modify JunkSpy to eliminate genuine but special mail which appears to be junk (see Global Exceptions and JunkSpy documentation)

1. this is essentially a workaround; if the good people at JunkSpy ever create a server version, then we won't need this sort of thing any more because our OS/2-eCS servers will do it for us (and probably charge us for the service, which would be fair enough - everybody has to eat)
2. since we are "bending" JunkSpy to operate differently, the licensing situation requires careful attention: do the right thing because it's the right thing to do
3. I have illustrated with PMMail and Weasel because they are the software programs I use here, but I know that other server software is already doing the same thing (eg. zxmail) and
4. this is working as I write with current versions of software: I don't have a crystal ball with which to predict the future.

This page was last revised 29 November 2004 by John Angelico using:

• HTML-Editor v0.96b, a text editor with keyboard macros, programming features and a previewer, to create the source files;
• PPWizard, a FREE tool for OS/2, Windows, DOS and UNIX by Dennis Bareis, to pre-process the source into HTML
• Netscape Navigator versions 2.02 and 4.61 for final testing.

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