Re: vger weirdness

Matti Aarnio (matti.aarnio@sonera.fi)
Sun, 16 May 1999 03:38:07 +0300 (EEST)


> Looks like a change somewhere in the mailing list handling triggered a
> spam killer. My kernel mail is now arriving with a X-UIDL: header. This
> has caused all arriving linux-kernel mail to be tossed into the
> (recoverable) spam bucket. SMTP mail should not have this header. Is one
> of the list exploders collecting mail via POP3?

Indeed, no, not via POP3, but software used at VGER for the MTA
functions did handle pipe driven programs the same way as "message
store files" (e.g. UNIX mailbox).

My opinnion about considering "X-UIDL:" as a sign of spam is that
the idea is misguided. All in all, an evolutionary view at the
spammers can show that for every *simple* countermeasure we use
against some simple signature characteristics, the spammers will
adapt fairly quickly. The only truly effective way to block the
spammers is to have message content analysing system which does
recognize spams out of non-spams.

For interesting reading on the topic, see RFC 2505
( I get it from: ftp://ftp.funet.fi/rfc/rfc2505.txt )

/Matti Aarnio <matti.aarnio@sonera.fi> <mea@vger.rutgers.edu>
<mea@nic.funet.fi>

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