From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Mon Sep 20 1999 - 10:42:14 MDT
> Would it not be possible to stop the spam on this list by setting
> majordomo to reject posts from any address which is not in the list of
> addresses subscribed? Wherever this spam is coming from, it is almost
> certainly not from an address signed up to the list. And if it is, that
> address could be deleted from the subscription list.
Doesn't help. I manage 5 mailing lists, most of which have this
setting, and they get no less spam than the others. Spammers are
crafty buggers--they won't let simple countermeasures get in their
way. They just use automated software that creates bogus send
addresses, subscribes them to the list, sends mail, then removes
any trace that the address ever existed so there's no one to
complain to.
This setting does, however, make it tricky for folks like me who
get on the net from several different access points to send mail
to the list from some of them (my postings often come from
"lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net" even though my real address is
"lee@piclab.com"). That's a minor annoyance, and I (and others)
can work around it, but it's an example of how security can get
in the way of legitimate use.
Spammers are scum. I don't mean to imply that they should be
simply tolerated. Reasonable countermeasures can be done and are
being done. I'm just saying that trying to prevent 100% is a bit
beyond reasonable, so being annoyed by the occasional one that
slips through the cracks is pointless.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:13 MST