1 t-prot -- TOFU protection
2 =========================
4 1. What the hell is TOFU?
6 TOFU is an abbreviation which mixes German and English words; it expands
7 to "text oben, full-quote unten" which means "text above - full quote
8 below" and describes the style of so many users who let their mailer or
9 newsreader quote everything of the previous message and just add some
10 text at the top; obviously they think that quoted text must not be
11 changed at all. This is quite annoying as it needlessly sends a lot of
12 data even when it is not required. Some editing of messages is desired.
13 Please point these people to the page http://learn.to/edit_messages -
16 2. What does the script do?
17 It detects, and when demanded hides annoying parts in rfc822 messages:
18 TOFU, signatures (especially when they are too long), excessive
19 punktuation, blocks of empty lines, trailing spaces and tabs.
20 For use inside of MTAs or MDAs it may exit with appropriate libc exit
21 codes, so annoying messages may be bounced easily.
23 3. For what can I use it?
24 There are several possibilities. One is to filter your email or news
25 messages when displaying them in your MUA. Another is blocking annoying
26 messages entirely from your system - using the script in some sendmail
27 or procmail rule, or perhaps even inside innd.
29 4. Give me some example! What about an example configuration for the MUA
31 An example is included in the distribution. Please see the man page for
32 further details on the activated features.
34 5. And what about other MUAs?
35 I just use mutt, so I do not know how to filter messages in other MUAs.
36 If you know how to incorporate t-prot e.g. in Gnus, please just drop me
39 6. And what about an example for bouncing emails?
40 Put a line like the following in your /etc/mail/aliases:
42 notofu: |"/usr/local/bin/t-prot -cemtS -p=user@mydomain"
44 (Do not forget to call `newaliases`.) Messages for notofu@mydomain will
45 be scanned for TOFU. If t-prot found TOFU in a message, it will bounce,
46 otherwise it will be forwarded to user@mydomain. This works great with
47 sendmail, if you use another MTA you probably have to adapt it.
49 7. Where did the idea come from?
50 Many thanks to Gerhard H. Wrodnigg who uses a TOFU protection script
51 in order to keep the responses to his cancel bot reasonably short. The
52 entire inspiration for this hack came from the "TOFU protection" line of
53 his script on many usenet postings.