Thread: Re: off-topic: SPAM

Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:

On Thu, 24 Apr 2008, Gregory Stark wrote:

> "Alvaro Herrera" <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> writes:
>
>> Marc G. Fournier escribió:
>>>
>>> where are the reports going to?  am I missing off a list somewhere?
>>>
>>> of course, your response really didn't enlighten me any ... what is the
>>> problem that is being seen / reported ?
>>
>> The problem is that any time some posts to pgsql-performance he gets a
>> bounce from a postmaster in infotecnica.com.br domain.
>>
>> It has been reported in several lists:
>>
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-www/2007-12/msg00203.php
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2007-12/msg00697.php
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2007-12/msg00126.php
>
> The only way we're going to solve this is to send a personalized email to
> every subscriber of pgsql-performance. We might be able to get away with just
> doing brazilian subscribers first and hope it's one of those.

That would only be 42 email addresses, so not *too* painful, but if their
email requires a 'challenge-response' to send to them, how did they get
subscribed in the first place, as our subscribe method is
'challenge-response' also, which means they have to receive the email we
send to them automaticalloy in the first place ...

So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?

Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?

We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
but Greg here has offered to take matters on his own hands.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.


Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
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Hash: SHA1



- --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 18:41:09 -0400 Gregory Stark 
<stark@enterprisedb.com> wrote:

> "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:
>
>> 'k, just checked and yes, we have blocked one Brazil domain in the past
>> because of this issue:
>>
>> subscribe
>> deny,  reason="uol.com.br requires non-spam confirmation .. "
>> /@uol.com.br/i || /Moniquechristien@cs.com/i
>>
>> So we could add similar ... but, the question comes back to if they have a
>> spam confirmation required, how is email getting to them in order to
>> subscribe them in the first place?  The only way I can think of is that this
>> is a feature that has been added *since* they registered ...
>
> What does uol.com.br have to do with infotecnica.com.br? Are you sure this
> wasn't a similar but unrelated case?

Related only in so far as we have, in the past, banned a domain due to the 
'spam confirmation emails' issue ...

> Another possible answer to the question is that someone was frustrated by the
> ban and subscribed at a different address then forwarded the mail.

That's kind of what I'm wondering, which makes it even harder to track down ...

But, as I've said, if someone wants to write a good, well worded email, I have 
no problem with doing a quick for loop to send out one message per user, maybe 
with a counter in the subject line, and see what bounces back for those .br 
addresses *shrug*

- -- 
Marc G. Fournier        Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A. (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



- --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 14:24:04 -0400 Alvaro Herrera 
<alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
>> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
>
> We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,

Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...

- -- 
Marc G. Fournier        Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A. (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Joshua D. Drake"
Date:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> 
> 
> - --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 14:24:04 -0400 Alvaro Herrera 
> <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> 
>> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>
>>> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
>> We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
> 
> Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...

Which lists are we talking about?

Joshua D. Drake



Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:

pgsql-performance in this case ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664

On Thu, 24 Apr 2008, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> - --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 14:24:04 -0400 Alvaro Herrera 
>> <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>> 
>>>> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
>>> We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
>> 
>> Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...
>
> Which lists are we talking about?
>
> Joshua D. Drake
>
>


Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> - --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 14:24:04 -0400 Alvaro Herrera 
> <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> 
> > Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> >
> >> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
> >
> > We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
> 
> Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...

May I suggest you just give the subscriber list to Greg Stark, like he
asked at the start of the thread?  He might be able to find the guilty.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support


Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Joshua D. Drake"
Date:
Alvaro Herrera wrote:

>>>> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
>>> We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
>> Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...
> 
> May I suggest you just give the subscriber list to Greg Stark, like he
> asked at the start of the thread?  He might be able to find the guilty.
> 

May I also suggest that we consider giving ownership to someone with 
more cycles?

Joshua D. Drake


Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
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Hash: SHA1



- --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 21:52:13 -0400 Alvaro Herrera 
<alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:

> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>
>> - --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 14:24:04 -0400 Alvaro Herrera
>> <alvherre@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>> >
>> >> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
>> >
>> > We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
>>
>> Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...
>
> May I suggest you just give the subscriber list to Greg Stark, like he
> asked at the start of the thread?  He might be able to find the guilty.

Talk to Josh Berkus, he's the owner of that list ...

- -- 
Marc G. Fournier        Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A. (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1



- --On Thursday, April 24, 2008 18:53:45 -0700 "Joshua D. Drake" 
<jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>
>>>>> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?
>>>> We don't know.  Normally that would be up to the owner to figure out,
>>> Ah, that would be Josh Berkus ...
>>
>> May I suggest you just give the subscriber list to Greg Stark, like he
>> asked at the start of the thread?  He might be able to find the guilty.
>>
>
> May I also suggest that we consider giving ownership to someone with more
> cycles?

That works too ... talk to Josh Berkus, he's the owner of the list :)

- -- 
Marc G. Fournier        Hub.Org Hosting Solutions S.A. (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664
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Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
"Marc G. Fournier"
Date:
'k, just checked and yes, we have blocked one Brazil domain in the past
because of this issue:

subscribe
deny,  reason="uol.com.br requires non-spam confirmation .. "
/@uol.com.br/i || /Moniquechristien@cs.com/i

So we could add similar ... but, the question comes back to if they have a
spam confirmation required, how is email getting to them in order to
subscribe them in the first place?  The only way I can think of is that
this is a feature that has been added *since* they registered ...

If someone wants to write up a nice form letter, I can send out an
individual message to each user in the *.br domain, and for each that
bounce back with a 'confirmation required', remove them ... but I'm not
sure if it makes much sense to go through the confirm and see if they can
work around the issue ...

----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email . scrappy@hub.org                              MSN . scrappy@hub.org
Yahoo . yscrappy               Skype: hub.org        ICQ . 7615664

On Thu, 24 Apr 2008, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, 24 Apr 2008, Gregory Stark wrote:
>
>> "Alvaro Herrera" <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org> writes:
>>
>>> Marc G. Fournier escribi�:
>>>>
>>>> where are the reports going to?  am I missing off a list somewhere?
>>>>
>>>> of course, your response really didn't enlighten me any ... what is the
>>>> problem that is being seen / reported ?
>>>
>>> The problem is that any time some posts to pgsql-performance he gets a
>>> bounce from a postmaster in infotecnica.com.br domain.
>>>
>>> It has been reported in several lists:
>>>
>>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-www/2007-12/msg00203.php
>>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2007-12/msg00697.php
>>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2007-12/msg00126.php
>>
>> The only way we're going to solve this is to send a personalized email to
>> every subscriber of pgsql-performance. We might be able to get away with
>> just
>> doing brazilian subscribers first and hope it's one of those.
>
> That would only be 42 email addresses, so not *too* painful, but if their
> email requires a 'challenge-response' to send to them, how did they get
> subscribed in the first place, as our subscribe method is
> 'challenge-response' also, which means they have to receive the email we send
> to them automaticalloy in the first place ...
>
> So, are these a result of forwarding, vs direct subscription?

Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
Gregory Stark
Date:
"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

> 'k, just checked and yes, we have blocked one Brazil domain in the past because
> of this issue:
>
> subscribe
> deny,  reason="uol.com.br requires non-spam confirmation .. "
> /@uol.com.br/i || /Moniquechristien@cs.com/i
>
> So we could add similar ... but, the question comes back to if they have a spam
> confirmation required, how is email getting to them in order to subscribe them
> in the first place?  The only way I can think of is that this is a feature that
> has been added *since* they registered ...

What does uol.com.br have to do with infotecnica.com.br? Are you sure this
wasn't a similar but unrelated case?

Another possible answer to the question is that someone was frustrated by the
ban and subscribed at a different address then forwarded the mail.

--  Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com Ask me about EnterpriseDB's On-Demand Production
Tuning


Re: off-topic: SPAM

From
Gregory Stark
Date:
"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:

> But, as I've said, if someone wants to write a good, well worded email, I have 
> no problem with doing a quick for loop to send out one message per user, maybe 
> with a counter in the subject line, and see what bounces back for those .br 
> addresses *shrug*

As I said I was just going to send "Test message, please ignore" or something
like that.

Note that you need to put the individual subscriber in the To header. The
worst problem with this amazingly brain-dead spam filter is that it doesn't
give you back any other info about the original email aside from the From
header and the To header.

--  Gregory Stark EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com Ask me about EnterpriseDB's RemoteDBA services!