Thread: How about re-moderating pgsql-announce?

It looks to me like pgsql-announce has found its way onto the spammers'
target lists.  Since the announce list was switched to unmoderated
status at the beginning of May, my mail logs show its traffic as

        Real messages        Spam

May        3            0
June        9            2
July        1            4

... and July's only half over.

May I suggest that pgsql-announce should go back to moderated status?
Otherwise I foresee being forced to unsubscribe from it soon.

            regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> It looks to me like pgsql-announce has found its way onto the spammers'
> target lists.  Since the announce list was switched to unmoderated
> status at the beginning of May, my mail logs show its traffic as
>
>         Real messages        Spam
>
> May        3            0
> June        9            2
> July        1            4
>
> ... and July's only half over.
>
> May I suggest that pgsql-announce should go back to moderated status?
> Otherwise I foresee being forced to unsubscribe from it soon.

Alternatively, could we just bounce any mail from non-subscribers?  We
could say something like "Due to the increasing amount of unsolicited
email on this list we require that posters are subscribed to the list.
In order to subscribe ... Then repost your message and it will be
accepted."  I doubt any spammers would go to the trouble of
subscribing to the list.

Ocie

ocie@paracel.com writes:
> Alternatively, could we just bounce any mail from non-subscribers?  We
> could say something like "Due to the increasing amount of unsolicited
> email on this list we require that posters are subscribed to the list.
> In order to subscribe ... Then repost your message and it will be
> accepted."  I doubt any spammers would go to the trouble of
> subscribing to the list.

Even better: accept messages from known subscribers and post them at
once.  Messages from non-subscribers are silently forwarded to the
list admin, who either approves them for posting or /dev/nulls them.
This should keep the spam out but save the list admin from having to
hand-process most of the routine traffic.

(I *think* the above is fairly easy to do with recent majordomo
releases, but I don't know what hub.org is running.  Simply switching
pgsql-announce back to moderated status would certainly be easy, which
is why I suggested it to start with.)

I don't like the idea of auto-bouncing back to the message originator,
for two reasons:
* There have been reported instances of spammers subscribing to lists
  for just long enough to send their spam.  I think we are best off
  not advertising that there is any filtering mechanism in place.
* The return address of a spam is generally fraudulent.  It often points
  to an innocent victim who has incurred the spammer's displeasure (by
  complaining about a previous spam).  That person gets to bear the
  brunt of all the delivery failure error messages, poorly targeted
  complaints, etc from the spam.  We shouldn't contribute to this form
  of mailbombing by auto-bouncing messages.

            regards, tom lane

On Fri, 17 Jul 1998, Tom Lane wrote:

> (I *think* the above is fairly easy to do with recent majordomo
> releases, but I don't know what hub.org is running.  Simply switching
> pgsql-announce back to moderated status would certainly be easy, which
> is why I suggested it to start with.)

    I'm running a *fairly* recent version of Majordomo here...let me
know what you feel should be set, and to what, and I'll make the change...