Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

[presotto]

I agree, the spammers have won.

> As a first approximation, we could set the 9fans list so that only
> subscribers can post, but that would probably break the usenet gateway.

I agree that if we need to, that's a reasonable possibility.  I do it
with personal mail and it works quite well for me.  No spammer has
taken the trouble to add themselves to my list and no friend, no matter
how computer fearful, has failed to do it.  How does the
usenet gateway work?  Could we just add anything that comes from
it despite a subscriber filter?

We could also go to a moderator that cuts out obvious spam
but who has the time.

However, given the low rate of spammers we currently have, I
suggest just ignoring the problem for now and hitting 'd'
or whatever a few times a week.  We'll have plenty of motivation
to do something if things get noisier.

Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

[Russ Cox]

> Unfortunately (but maybe not) you're right, the mail<->news gateway
> would fail.  Again, that does not bother me, as I have no NetNews
> access and prefer closed mailing lists anyway, but others will
> understandably differ in opinion.

Other things would break too.  For example most of the readers
on plan9.bell-labs.com aren't subscribed directly.
We have a local fan-out address that is subscribed.
And I should be able to post from any of my addresses,
etc. etc. etc.

Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

[Russ Cox]

> I agree that if we need to, that's a reasonable possibility.  I do it
> with personal mail and it works quite well for me.  No spammer has
> taken the trouble to add themselves to my list and no friend, no matter
> how computer fearful, has failed to do it.

I hold the mail in a separate mailbox (using pipeto.sample-hold
rather than pipeto.sample in /sys/src/cmd/upas/filterkit)
and it also works quite well.  Once a day or two I run mail -f _held
and delete the spam.  I feel bad tossing mail back at people
and I'm on too many low-volume mailing lists that I've
forgotten about.

I also send mail from multiple places so occasionally I send
mail to someone and their response ends up in _held.
I'm much happier with that than having the response get
bounced.

Russ

Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

[Digby Tarvin]

I normally feel obliged to report this sort of blatant fraud when
I receive it directly, but there isn't enough header information
when it comes via a list. Is someone taking care of it?

It always seems a little irresponsible to me to just install filters
and leave inexperienced net users to the mercy of the con men....

I would imagine that with the formidable combined expertise of the
subscribers on this list, you would have to be pretty stupid to spam
it.

Anybody got any good tips for effective ways to deal with spammers?
I am fequently frustrated by NICs that allow IP registrants to privide
false (or no) e-mail address with which to report abuse.

DigbyT

THOMAS  EDWARDS:
> From 9fans-admin@cse.psu.edu Sun Jun 16 21:38:46 2002
> Delivered-To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
> From: "THOMAS  EDWARDS" <thomyeddy@yahoo.co.uk>
> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
> Subject: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE
> STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL & URGENT.
>
>  I am Mr, Thomas Edwards a native of Cape Town in
>  South Africa and I am an Executive Accountant with
>  the

etc.

--
Digby R. S. Tarvin                                              digbyt@acm.org
http://www.cthulhu.dircon.co.uk

Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

[Scott Schwartz]

| I normally feel obliged to report this sort of blatant fraud when
| I receive it directly, but there isn't enough header information
| when it comes via a list. Is someone taking care of it?

Yeah, sometimes.  I also update the spam filters, where feasable.
That said, I don't think mailman strips the headers you need.  Just look
at the Received lines preceeding the ones for cse.psu.edu.

| Anybody got any good tips for effective ways to deal with spammers?

No, they've won.  What we need is an alternative email network that only
nice people are allowed to use, and meaningful punishment for abusers.
I see this as our chance to reintroduce bangpaths and uucp. :)

As a first approximation, we could set the 9fans list so that only
subscribers can post, but that would probably break the usenet gateway.

Re: [9fans] INVESTMENT & ASSISTANCE

[Lucio De Re]

On Sun, Jun 16, 2002 at 08:49:29PM -0400, Scott Schwartz wrote:
>
> | Anybody got any good tips for effective ways to deal with spammers?
>
> No, they've won.  What we need is an alternative email network that only
> nice people are allowed to use, and meaningful punishment for abusers.
> I see this as our chance to reintroduce bangpaths and uucp. :)
>
You may be joking, but I've been toying with the idea ever since the
Director of the Department of Communications here in South Africa
took it upon his department to take over management of the ZA DNS
namespace.  Was UUCP ever ported to Plan 9?  Hm, pathalias always
frightened me :-(

> As a first approximation, we could set the 9fans list so that only
> subscribers can post, but that would probably break the usenet gateway.

Unfortunately (but maybe not) you're right, the mail<->news gateway
would fail.  Again, that does not bother me, as I have no NetNews
access and prefer closed mailing lists anyway, but others will
understandably differ in opinion.

++L