here is an incredibly easy way to put a self-maintained whitelist on your unix email accounts.

append this to your .procmailrc

extract the FROM field

FROM=formail -XFrom: -r -xTo: | tr -d ' '

deliver good email to the regular inbox

:0

• ? echo "$FROM" | egrep -i -f $HOME/.whitelist $DEFAULT

deliver bad email to the spam folder

:0 Mail/spam

Thats it! just create a .whitelist file of regular expressions in your home directory for email addresses you know you want to receive mail from.

problems: you still have to sift through the spam folder looking for email from people who might not be on your whitelist, then add them to the list.

so far ive got pea to put "SPAM" in the subject line if the From: address is not in pea's whitelist. That should make deleting spam a lot easier.