Three boxtrapper problems, need help [moved]

Three boxtrapper problems, need help

First of all, I really like boxtrapper and the whole challenge/response setup. It's eliminated my spam almost completely (almost being something I'll touch on below). Of the three problems I'm seeing, only one is a major ordeal though. In any case, here they are:

1 - Boxtrapper appears to assume *whitelistedemail@domain.com. For instance, if I whitelist bob@bobshouse.com, any emails from bigbob@bobshouse.com also get through. This is of course incorrect because I didn't whitelist *bob@bobshouse.com.

2 - blacklisting *badguy@spammers.com doesn't eliminate emails from mrbadguy@spammers.com, but it obviously should.

3 - (this is the big one) It took 4 days and probably 3 or 4 attempts to get a gift certificate from NewEgg because boxtrapper considered the emails header to be malformed. While I appreciate it looking out for me, I'd really appreciate it leaving the email in the queue and allowing me to make the call of whether or not to permanently negate me from being able to receive that email. The exact message in the review log was:

Discarding malformed message from sender: due to invalid From: header ()

 

Better yet, you do me a favor and post your useless drivel elsewhere.

 

No, I don't think it was harsh. I've tried spam filtering utilizing simple email rules, Popfile (Bayesian based), Thunderbird (Bayesian based), Spam Assassin, and Postini. The common theme among all of them? They don't work.

Regardless of how good they get, spammers get around them by simply replacing letters in words with numbers, misspelling words, transposing letters, etc. Inevitably, good emails get flagged as spam which means I still have to go check the spam folder periodically anyway, so what's the use? If I'm going to have to look at them anyway, why filter them out and make myself look in two places as opposed to one?

Boxtrapper (or any challenge/response system) is a major step in the right direction IMO. It's a simple concept; whitelisted emails get through, others don't. If I send you an email you are added to my whitelist. If I signup for something that generates an automated email I look in the queue immediately after signing up and whitelist the valid email sitting there. If you want to be added to my whitelist, you must answer the challenge. If you are incapable of answering the challenge (replying to an email) then I probably don't want to be communicating w/you via email in the first place.

I don't have to repeatedly go look in the queue to see if something went there that shouldn't have. I don't have emails flooding my inbox from spammers who blast out thousands of emails at a time with spoofed from/reply to addresses, and bogus opt-outs. What I do have, is a clean inbox and only one place to check for new emails.

Boxtrapper is close, very close IMO. It comes free with my hosting agreement and for the last few months has served me well. During that time I've noticed a couple of issues with it, but only recently have I noticed what is more of a bug than a nuisance. I came to the website of the developers of CPanel, posted a valid multi-paragraph post and am responded to with a single sentence containing no facts or even suggestions on alterative solutions. To be brutally honest, your post did nothing but waste time, storage space, and bandwidth.

I'm not trying to be mean, harsh, or in any way insult you. What I'm hoping you're getting out of this is the message that you should possibly concentrate more on assisting people here than simply throwing out negative opinions without even backing them up with the the basis for their being.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm *really* trying to stay away from any form of content based filtering. I've had too many good emails get caught and I don't know about you, but I hate having to check multiple places for good email. :p

 

The CPanel devs should ignore your post, as it's a pretty good system as-is.