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spam prevention features in Pegasus Mail
``` [A most excellent RRE subscriber was telling me about legal and technical steps that David Harris, originator of Pegasus Mail, had taken to prevent his program from being used for spam purposes. Here are some relevant messages.]
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Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 08:14:18 -0600
From: "Scott Morizot"
[...]
The US Pegasus web site is:
http://www.pmail.com/
The Terms and Conditions are available at:
http://www.pmail.com/license.htm
I think you'll like them. It's the only package I know currently that explicitly includes provisions against spam in the license. Although they don't have extensive legal funds to pursue all the people who do use it (and the laws vary extensively from country to country) anyone who does use Pegasus in that manner is essentially using the software illegally. And that might help in a third-party lawsuit if needed. 2 relevant messages I retrieved from Dejanews are below.
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From Dejanews, the message where David Harris announced the Anti-Spam measures incorporated into Pegasus:
Subject: Anti-spam measures incorporated into v2.5x.
From: David Harris
The use or distribution of Pegasus Mail for the purposes of sending bulk, unsolicited commercial e-mail is prohibited under its terms and conditions of use. In order to support this prohibition, Starting with version 2.50, Pegasus Mail for Windows incorporates measures that should make it less useful to "spammers" (senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail), and which should allow users of e-mail applications that can filter mail to deal automatically with undesired "spam" messages sent using Pegasus Mail.
Pegasus Mail now adds one of three new headers to messages it sends when more than 50 recipients are present in the message. These headers can be used as filtering triggers to delete such messages. The headers are based on the number of recipients, and are as follows:
0-50 recipients - no added header 50-499 recipients - "X-Distribution: Moderate" 500-4999 recipients - "X-Distribution: Bulk" 5000+ recipients - "X-Distribution: Mass"
These headers have an internal CRC check applied to them and cannot be changed or omitted by patching the binary. We have deferred announcing the presence of these headers until now in order to give WinPMail v2.5x a chance to propagate widely, and presumably into the hands of a large number of spammers. While spammers using older versions of WinPMail will escape the new headers, they will become progressively further and further out of date and will be unable to take advantage of the newer capabilities of the system without upgrading and thus exposing themselves to automated detection.
As an example of how these headers may be useful in reducing spam levels, we show below the steps necessary to create the Pegasus Mail filtering rules that will delete such messages. Similar actions could presumably be taken in other e-mail packages supporting automated processing of this kind.
We believe this addition to Pegasus Mail should be a significant step towards reducing the prevalence of spam, or at least towards reducing the abuse of Pegasus Mail for this purpose, yet it does not significantly impact on legitimate users of the program.
Cheers!
-- David --
-------------------------- Cut here ----------------------------
Adding Pegasus Mail filtering rules to handle the new headers:
1: Open your "New mail filtering rules", "Rules applied when folder is opened" rule set. In WinPMail v2.5x you will find this on the "Tools" menu under "Mail filtering rules".
2: Click the "End of list" entry to ensure the rule is added at the end of the list of rules.
3: Click "Add Rule"
4: Click the radio button labelled "As an expression" and make sure the radio button labelled "In message headers only" is also checked.
5: In the "Trigger text" field, type "X-Distribution:*Bulk"
6: Set the "Action to take" to "Delete" (or whatever else you feel is appropriate).
Now repeat steps 2 to 6, but at step 5 type "X-Distribution:*Mass"
Save the rules, and you're done. These rules will automatically remove any messages generated by a copy of Pegasus Mail v2.5x containing more than 500 recipients. You could also add a rule that deleted all messages containing more than 50 recipients, but doing this may occasionally result in legitimate messages being deleted.
If you receive mail from a legitimate mailing list that could contain these headers, you can prevent the message from being deleted by adding a rule higher in the list than the spam-detection rule, that triggers on some different characteristic of the message (like the sender's address) and choose the "Exit this rule set" action, or else perhaps move the "good" message to a folder.
------------------ David Harris -+- Pegasus Mail -------------------------- Box 5451, Dunedin, New Zealand | e-mail: David.Harris@pmail.gen.nz Phone: +64 3 453-6880 | Fax: +64 3 453-6612
Sign in the room of an Italian hotel: "Visitors are requested not to throw coffee or other matter in the basin. Why else it stuffs the place inconvenient for the other world."
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Also from Dejanews, the announcement of the supply for spam provision. (The use for spam provision was always there.)
Subject: IMPORTANT: Enough is enough!
From: David Harris
Effective immediately, the terms and conditions of use for Pegasus Mail are amended to include the following paragraph:
The supply or promotion of Pegasus Mail for the purpose of sending bulk, unsolicited e-mail is incompatible with the basic aims of the program, which revolve around the free provision of a service that enhances the quality of peoples' communication. Pegasus Mail may not be included in any package designed for this purpose, whether free or otherwise, nor may vendors of such packages use the "Pegasus Mail" trademark or other related material in the promotion of their package.
Vendors or suppliers currently including Pegasus Mail in their bulk e- mail products are hereby required to remove copies of and all references to the Pegasus Mail software from their products. Failure to comply with this requirement will lead to legal action.
The assistance of all members of the PMAIL and PM-NEWS mailing lists in getting this message to vendors of mass-mail products would be gratefully appreciated: in many cases, these people do not have functional e-mail addresses and only have fax numbers. If you receive an obvious "spam", we would be appreciative if you would fax this message to the perpetrator.
Pegasus Mail is a tool for quality communication, and we regard indiscriminate mass-mailing as an antisocial, irresponsible abuse of what we believe is our generosity in providing a service to the broader Internet community.
David Harris Author and owner, Pegasus Mail System. 14th November 1996.
------------------ David Harris -+- Pegasus Mail -------------------------- Box 5451, Dunedin, New Zealand | e-mail: David.Harris@pmail.gen.nz Phone: +64 3 453-6880 | Fax: +64 3 453-6612
On the box of a clockwork toy from Hong Kong: "Guaranteed to work throughout its useful life."
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Scott Morizot tmorizot@ccsi.com http://www.ccsi.com/~tmorizot/
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 10:30:30 -0600
From: "Scott Morizot"
[About the Comment: field...]
This may be in the FAQ on the Web site somewhere, but following is the segment from the Help file about the Comment: field with the Authenticated sender message.
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From field: WinPMail allows you to specify your own from field in outgoing messages. This facility is provided only to allow you to conform with local addressing schemes or requirements and should not be used capriciously. In order to prevent message forgery using this feature, WinPMail will only send mail if you have entered a valid username and password in the POP3 section of the configuration dialog, and will check the validity of these details when sending. The valid POP3 address is written into a field in the message for security reasons.
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The field in the message is the Comment: header with the authenticated sender information. It could be bogus, but it would require that someone had the collusion of a provider (as in one of the spam providers) or had altered Pegasus. Of course, it the mail agent isn't Pegasus, then it's almost certainly bogus as I don't think any other client actually does the above.
Again, hope this helps.
Scott ```
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