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SubjectRe: Block spam, become removed from the list ...
[ob note: this is possible a necessary discussion *about* this list and so
is posted publicly to the list]

On Wed, 7 Apr 1999, Matti Aarnio wrote:
> Sure that reaction may sound stupid to you at first, but consider
> that each of us must somehow process something like 200 to 2000
> rejection reports every day thru all the year, and we do all that
> at our spare time.

scripting can alleviate nearly all of this. you have a variety of options
available to choose from. procmail is one extensible path. being the admin
of large corp. nets, i also receive a multitude of rejections. thus it pays
to become very familiar with text processing tools :)

> Unfortunately we postmasters/list-owners don't have the luxury
> of time to educate people of the nyances of email systems; when
> to blame some system, and when *not* to blame. That last one
> can be a difficult question to answer without 5+ years of email
> systems and protocols experience...

the experience must be measured from the sender, the recipient, and the
administrative sides of both the sender and recipient.

> So, if you folks want to filter incoming email against some source
> addresses carrying SPAM, be damn carefull that you don't filter
> too much. Letting *some* spam thru is way better than killing
> all your incoming email.

tying up the sender's queue is also useful. consider hotmail's normal flood
of spam. even with my system and personal filters, i still get some 3-5
spams a day with hotmail tags. how much of my resources do i have to put
forth to block this mass of junk? how much spam can fit through a modem
before there's no bandwidth left for anything else? by the time email
enters my vpn queue, a lot of spam has already been blocked by both the
system and personal filters ahead of it.

on one corp. net that i manage, some three-five hundred thousand emails a
day flow in. some 16-22% of it is spam that is detected and blocked. using
sendmail we block the 2nd level domain then allow access to a particular
segment of that domain if necessary. the list is made available to our
clients and they can request domains added/removed from the engine.

since the inception of the policy at the above operation, the number of
complaints received over a three year period measures around a couple dozen.
on the other hand we receive numerous compliments that we have the most spam
free mailboxes they've found.

> Filtering the email by delivering it to /dev/null is also better
> approach, than rejecting it at the input phase. Sure the byte-
> counters spin, but that isn't so bad as becoming removed because
> of over-eager pre-reception blocking based on false rules.

accepting these connections and running it through the system to eventually
end up in the bitbucket uses more of my resources than i choose to allow.

in the above commentary i act as the administrator of the recipient side.
many of the list subscribers are not administrators however and have no
control over their admin's spam blocking practices.

cutting them off serves no purpose. they're out through no fault of theirs.

it is better to take your same principle you're asking the recipients to
adopt and apply it to yourself. script and filter. automate this and you
don't have to spend valuable time dealing with it.

by unsubscribing people, you're simply making them resubscribe. they don't
necessarily have a choice in their provider and this action is only going to
cause ill feelings to the list, list members, and the linux community.

please consider again your radical policy against people who choose not to
receive and deal with spam.

-d
--
This is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows NT reboot!
Do you remember how to -think- ? Do you remember how to experiment? Linux
__ is an operating system that brings back the fun and adventure in computing.
\/ for linux-kernel: please read linux/Documentation/* before posting problems


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