[MacPerl] Fighting Spam with MacPerl: A Challange.

[Brian McNett <webmaster@mycoinfo.com>]

Okay, I'm up in arms today, and I need to vent.

You've probably all seen the spam that begins:

BENCHMARK PRINT SUPPLY
7540 BRIDGEGATE COURT
ATLANTA GA 30350

***LASER PRINTER TONER CARTRIDGES***
***FAX AND COPIER TONER***

Well, as a resident of Washington State, I have the legal right of action 
to pursue the scum-of-the-earth who propagate this trash. What I've also 
learned is that (at least here) a company is liable and responsible for 
the illegal unsolicited electronic mail of its independent 
representatives.  This means I can also persue any business advertised by 
a spammer, in lieu of the spammer himself.

So (and this may not be *exactly* a MacPerl question, but...), How do I 
go about detecting forged mail headers with Perl?  I ask this, because I 
find that this is the #1 way to detect a spam.  That's step one to 
collecting $500 per message from the spammer.

Now that I've asked the prerequisite question, I'd like to issue 
something of a challange.  To wit: Write a program in MacPerl, which not 
only detects spam (by checking email headers of messages either in the 
user's Eudora inbox, or peferably while they're still on the POP3 
server), but alerts both the owners of systems whose mailserver appears 
in the forged portion of the document, and prepares a request for legal 
action with the appropriate State AG (Washington State in my case, but 
other states now have anti-spam laws too).

I don't feel a REAL need to offer incentive (fighting such scum should be 
it's own reward), but I'm prepared to offer 10% of any out-of-court 
settlement arrived at through my use of the above tool either to the 
tool's author, or the charity of his/her choice.  (We're talking mostly 
pin-money here:  If I settle for $200/per spam, you get $20/spam.)  If I 
have to take a case to court, other arrangements will have to be made.

Questions and replies not including code should probably go off-list, but 
you want to post code-snippets, feel free.  I'll try to be as helpful as 
possible concerning which online resources to consult.

--B



# Brian McNett                                      Fungal Parataxonomy
# Webmaster, Staff Writer               Mycology Information (Mycoinfo)
#                              **The World's First Mycology E-Journal**   
# <mailto:webmaster@mycoinfo.com>            <http://www.mycoinfo.com/>
# First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you.
# Then you win.                                     --Mohandas Gandhi


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