Re: Spammers

[Matti Aarnio]

Cross-posted to a few of vger's lists, because this is a popular thing, 
and people need to be reminded about proper reaction to spams on these
lists:  NONE     (but do read onwards)

Reply is INTENTIONALLY directed to vger's postmasters: we have a small
group of BOFHs running the filters, if you don't like something of what
we do, you have to convince us, discussion and democracy in a list won't
alter our policies - instead it might get BOFHish treatment ...

On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 06:52:59PM +0200, Vladimír T?ebický wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>       Have you also noticed spammers attacking this mailing lists? I
>       don't know whether are they registered subscribers or whether it
>       is required for people to be registered as a subcribers so that
>       they could post to the mailling list.
> 
>       In attachment there is one of the most recent spams I received.

DON'T!

Spammers post everywhere, and we do _intentionally_ run lists as
open-for-posting, which necessitates retroactive filter addition,
in case a new strain of spams is seen.

This is one of the topics in the linux-kernel FAQ, which has
a lot of general things for all of vger's lists:
     http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Running lists _closed_ doesn't solve the thing either.  It would
be enough for a spammer to fake source address that is known poster
to a list.  We have to use message content analysis, but that isn't
very effective, when the content is extremely short (one web URL,
or some such..)   Main reason to not to close the lists is that
it would be a royal pain for managers, and for users...

Lattest spammer strains (software scare peddlers, various advance
fee fraudsters, etc.) are fairly well filtered away, but still
something does leak thru.   A _lot_ more goes to the trash-pile.
Some rare legitimate bits end up in there too, but we try to
have a moment to inform sender's of those about the issue.
We DO NOT approve any postings.

We rather tolerate a bit of spams, and filter them away from
repeating.  But remember that list-owners don't read all lists,
so sometimes contacting:  postmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  with
samples would expedite problem solving.   Posting to LISTS
won't help!

Note: VGER has web-service, try it!  See Majordomo-info.


Oh yes, anything short of a cordial letter to postmasters to
ask changes in our policies can fairly easily result in BOFHish
treatments..  (usually ignoring) .. don't whine!

Trivial changes might get made instantly, but things needing
a lot of work are prone to take a long time, if they will ever
be considered beyond work guestimation.   Volunteers for this
most thankless of tasks (you hardly ever get thanks, but tons
of complaints, of course!) can also offer themselves to us.

With _enough_ people, we might be able to turn the lists into
moderated (natural intelligence filter), with decent through-
put delays.   Consider doing that for at least for a couple
of years, and many hours per day ...   somehow I think that
is completely unfeasible approach on voluntary basis.

> -- 
> Regards,
>  Vladimir Trebicky                          mailto:trebicky@xxxxxxxx

/Matti Aarnio -- co-postmaster of vger.kernel.org
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