Help needed with Procmail on Hostway

can't understand their instructions...

[bluemi]

I have a problem with too much spam on my email accounts. My site is hosted at Hostway, and they gave me the following instructions:

1. Log on to your server via FTP. The default FTP settings you should
use are as follows:

HOST NAME: domain.com
HOST DIRECTORY: [Leave Blank]
HOST TYPE: Automatic
USER ID: domain (without the .com)
PASSWORD: Master Account Password (NOT sitecontrol password)

* You can reset your Master Account password in Site Control under
Users/Passwords.

Please note that if your domain has not transferred yet then you should
use your IP address in the Host Name field.

2. Once you are able to FTP you will need to create a file called .promailrc
3. Download that file, in ASCII format, into your Local System (your
computer) in a folder where you can easily locate it. Example: My
Documents.
4. Open the file using a text editor such as Notepad.
5. Add the following lines to your procmailrc file

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin

MAILDIR=$HOME

LOCKFILE=$HOME/.lockmail

:

* ^To:.*@machine.siteprotect.com

/dev/null

6. To change the email that you want to block change the
@machine.siteprotect.com. If you would like to block more than one
address just copy the last 3 lines and change the email address.
7. Once the change is complete, click on File ¦ Save As. Choose All Files*
as the File Type and click on .procmailrc file from the folder where you
downloaded it.
8. Log back onto your server via FTP and upload the file in ASCII format
back into your home directory, replacing the old one.

----------------------------------------

I have no problem with all the rest, but what is this
* ^To:.*@machine.siteprotect.com
line? Why "TO"? And No. 6 is completely un-understandable for me. So do I block emails TO my account? What sense would this make? Wouldn't I rather have to block emails FROM certain senders? And do I have to change "@machine.siteprotect.com" to my "domain.com"?

Thanks for any help with this!

[marcs]

Wouldn't I rather have to block emails FROM certain senders?

Yes, change that to

* ^From:.*spammer@spam_domain.com

Obviously modify the email address to reflect the one(s) to block

You can also filter out subject lines that way :

* ^Subject:.*STOCK MARKET ALERT

Note that pretty much all From addresses in SPAM are bogus, so this may not help much.

[piramida]

Ask them (your hoster) to install SpamAssasin. Ask them to start rejecting all mail with .pif .bat .scr atatchments, invalid sender, etc - its easy in the server's sendmail/exim config and stops 90% spam before it reaches the server. Point your 'catch-all' address to some :fail: string; enable only addresses you actually use.

And see your spam go down from 200+ to 20 per day nicely filtered into a spam folder. You can't really help spam problem by blacklisting each randomly generated address.

[bluemi]

Thanks for your replies. I like Hostway, they are very reliable, but big as they are they are a bit too unflexible and slow sometimes with things that even free providers are offering since long. For now I have found a "local" solution that works ok for me.