Spam handling (was Re: WWW.FNORB.COM)

[Oleg Broytmann]

On 24 May 2001, Aahz Maruch wrote:
> >>>   SpamCop.net did a good job for me about this message.
> >>
> >> You can't be sure of that.  If the original message used false headers,
> >> the netnews spam will contain the false headers.
> >
> >   It seems you've never tried SpamCop! It does amazing job digging real
> >information from even false headers!!!
>
> That's only true if the true headers don't get stripped.  I just
> checked, and Mailman does preserve the original Received: headers -- but
> only on the mailing list.  The mail->news gateway definitely strips

   Yes, I read this newsgroup by mail (e.i. I subscribed to Mailman list,
not newsgroup).

> those Received: headers, and that's what SpamCop uses to figure out
> where the spam came from.  That is, SpamCop relies on the fact that
> people forwarding e-mail haven't munged the headers, and therefore the
> last connection listed in the Received: headers *has* to be valid.

   There is a worse problem, though - some spam appeared here because it
was posted to the newsgroup, not mailed to the maillist. Then even SpamCop
has problems (though sometimes it does its job anyway).

Oleg.
----
     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.