Until a few weeks ago, I was able to send email mostly anywhere using my local postfix.  To me that's the most convenient configuration because I frequently switch networks and I don't like to change my SMTP server every time.  So I configured postfix on my laptop and I'm using "localhost" as my SMTP server.

But suddenly, a few popular email servers such as GMail or Yahoo now seem to reject my email with this message:

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“Good Morning, Mihai!  You have 33243 unread messages in your Inbox.”

How the heck does one delete so many messages?  CTRL-A works (select all) but when I press DEL my browser freezes.  I can't, of course, receive any more SPAM because my quota is already exceeded (“110%”).  The only way seems to be to manually select 20-30 messages and delete them.  If this process takes 10 seconds and assuming no other delays, I would need to repeatedly press the same clicks and keys for about 3 hours!

Grrr.

Everybody fights comment spam sooner or later.  I was quite (and almost pleasantly) surprised to note that my new blog started receiving comment SPAM within days since I launched it—and I only put a single link to it so far, which isn't even very visible.

I've been bitten so many times by comment spammers that in this new blog I put together a solution from the start.  It's based on a few principles—and so far seems quite effective, though it's too early to drive conclusions.

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