ASS keeps a database of email-addresses with associated validity period. it is used to generate and track addresses, so incoming emails can be categorized in an attempt to avoid spam.

if you are looking for a windows-solution, or if your system isn't unix, or if you don't have procmail and ifile, look further, this is not for you. it might, though, but you would have to spend some time changing the scripts. also, ASS can't do anything against bandwith-theft. spam still gets to your computer, but not on your nerves any more, as you don't get to see it.

the bright side? it's easy. often you don't know if an address getting spammed isn't also used legally. or if that HTML ASS sent back could have been the one chance of your life ;^). but if the guy on the other side is not a spammer, he/she isn't just cut off, they get a message together with an extension of three days. within this period people can send that important piece of email again, and when they are late again, the procedure repeats ad infinitum.

should you find some address starts getting spammed, you just go delete it, it's a simple file removal. and this won't hinder people getting in touch with you, it will only make it artificially slower and a little bit more complicated for the other side. yes, they will suffer, and the only thing they can do to get out of it is hitting that reply-button. because your reminders are getting sent with a valid ticket in the Fron: line, so this is what they have to do to use it. normal text emails also keep their body. not HTML, though, which shouldn't be sent as emails in the first place!

the database is kept as simple files in a directory set aside specifically for ASS. this means that you don't need any special database-tools, but also, that your database is as good as the filesystem ASS runs on. this might pose problems with older linux-filesystems if you let the db grow without ever expiring old tickets, because linux' standard fs used to keep directory entries in a list, so it got slower with growing size.

what i call "tickets" are two-line text-files. their name is a string made of seven hex-digits in lower case. now you'll understand why my email- addresses look like "ino-e........@your.domain". there are seven dots in the regular expression matching the name, and each dot stands for a hex- digit.

the first line of such a ticket is a large integer number denoting the number of seconds starting january 1st, 1970 (the epoch) until it is valid. the second line is what you supply as the second argument to the new- request (ticket-generation), usually the email-address of the person this ticket was issued to. this format is standard today, but it will "flip over", ie. start from zero again some time in 2036. by that time and with the current growth rate of spam ASS will still hold up and protect you, but it will use up many more resources then, and spammers will be able to abuse even address windows of only one week.

actually the term "ticket" is used loosely here: it denotes both a file in the ticket-database and the email-address associated with it, but it's easy to keep the meanings seperate.

this is all i should tell you here about ASS. you will have to download it and make some directory to unpack it in. then you will have to go through two of the four files it is composed off:

• validmail is the shell script. it has a configuration section at the top with two items to check. these are the adress-prefix and your domain.
• .procmailrc is a complete filter script. it also has it's configuration sections with reasonable defaults for an installtion having qmail and ifile. you will have to go through it carefully to get it to work at your place. the adress-prefix, your domain and the two time limits - for HTML emails and late tickets - need to be edited.

and here are the download links. i have nothing more to say. the files are heavily documented, you can do with them whatever you want as long as you keep my name on the unchanged parts.

download Anti-Spam-System. the most recent version is here, but this machine isn't always online.