More spam :-( Was Re: [Mailman-Users] Would you like to receive information on registering your pet online for free?

[Dan Wilder]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2001 at 01:13:19PM -0800, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:40:20 -0800 
> Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui at plaidworks.com> wrote:
> 
> > On 3/26/01 10:14 AM, "J C Lawrence" <claw at kanga.nu> wrote:
> >> There is a logn standing tradition for support lists for products
> >> to not be closed to non-subscribers.
> 
> > And ther's a long-standing tradition that this tradition causes
> > people like me to give up in disgust and leave, and when enough
> > people leave, all you have left are the spammers.
> 
> Umm, you'll notice that I didn't try and justify the tradition, just
> observed its presence and apparent application to this instance.

There's a middle ground.

For reasons of our own, we keep some of our lists open to posts
by non-subscribers.

A simple procmail front-end looks for "To:" or "Cc:" headers
mentioning the list.  Since most spamware is too stupid to
put these in, or else it is using third-party relay to 10,000
hapless victims, so a custom "To:" or "Cc:" is out of the
question, this excludes quite a bit of spam with one simple rule.

Mix in an RBL list or two, you're down to something not too bad,
even for an open-post mailing list.

Legitimate list mail that's been "Bcc:"ed or just forwarded
verbatim ("bounce" from mutt or elm) gets culled out, but 
the regulars get used to that, and of course if there are one
or two Weighty List Members who just can't manage that, they
can be exempted in the procmail rules.

-- 
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 Dan Wilder <dan at ssc.com>     Technical Manager, Editor, Correspondent
 SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549     Phone:  206-782-7733 x123
 Seattle, WA  98155-0549      URL    http://www.linuxjournal.com/
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