TMDA asks people if they are real?

Yes, it is called a "challenge/response method". When someone sends mail to a TMDA guarded e-mail address for the first time, instead of just blindly dumping the message in your in-box, TMDA puts it in a special quarantine area and sends a "challenge" back to the author. The challenge is just an e-mail that briefly explains the system and asks the user to reply to the challenge (this is the "response" part). Once TMDA receives the response, it releases the original message from quarantine and adds the sender to a list of people from which it will accept mail. Any future messages from that user will be accepted without another challenge.

How does that help?

Spammers typically put fake e-mail addresses on their spam. They don't want you to reply to them. The address they use is bad, so they never receive TMDA's challenge, they never get to respond, the message is never released from quarantine, and it never makes it to your in-box. Instead, it sits around and gathers dust until the system throws it away.

Great! How do I get it!

tmda-cgi is designed to run on your mail server. It does not run on your PC.

• If you are a system administrator who has not yet installed TMDA, start by surfing up TMDA's website.

• If you are a system administrator who has installed TMDA, but has not yet installed tmda-cgi, start by surfing up the install instructions.

• If you are not a system administrator, and you do not know if your mail server is running tmda-cgi, contact your sysadmin and ask them to install tmda-cgi for you. Give them this URL if they do not have it.

If you've already got tmda-cgi, proceed onto the FAQ to learn more about how it all works!