Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 13:19:23 +0200 From: Ruben de Groot <fbsd-q@bzerk.org> To: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist@ekahuna.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Spam problem on the list (Was: Re: URGENT) Message-ID: <20020623131923.A42352@ei.bzerk.org> In-Reply-To: <20020623074218749.AAA684@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com>; from pjklist@ekahuna.com on Sun, Jun 23, 2002 at 12:42:18AM -0700 References: <bulk.34623.20020621091452@hub.freebsd.org> <20020623074218749.AAA684@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, Jun 23, 2002 at 12:42:18AM -0700, Philip J. Koenig typed: > > Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 15:50:55 +0200 > > From: Ruben de Groot <fbsd-q@bzerk.org> > > > > On Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 09:12:25AM -0400, Stephen Hovey typed: > > > > > > > > > > The spam on this list is pretty phenomenal. Was it always this > > > > > bad? > > > > > > > > > > > > I don't think so. Then again, spam has gotten a lot worse everywhere > > > > over the last year or so. > > > > > > > > Then again, if questions@freebsd.org was like 95% of the email lists > > > > out there and didn't allow anyone in the whole wide world to post > > > > without being a listmember, I *guarantee* it would not be as bad as > > > > it is now. > > > > > > > > > > I think this was talked about in the past and the reasoning had something > > > to do with a problem of legit users not gettin it on their from addresses > > > in that arrangement (in other words signing up one way, but emailing from > > > another)... Personally, I think if you cant figure out that piece, you > > > should be a windows user.. > > > > > > > From /etc/motd (what every newbee will read after the first successfull > > installation): > > > > If you still have a question or problem, please take the output of > > `uname -a', along with any relevant error messages, and email it > > as a question to the questions@FreeBSD.org mailing list. > > > > I consider this an excellent service provided by FreeBSD. > > > It may be an "excellent service" to some minority of FreeBSD users, > but we all thought having open SMTP relays was an "excellent service" > too, back in the innocent years before the explosion of spam. > > Already at least one new user that I saw gave up after one day of > being on this list because of all the junk on it, and I also know > that some users in certain parts of the world consider it to be a > major problem to receive large parcels of junk - in many cases this > costs them real money due to usage costs. But you don't have to be subscribed to the list to ask a question. If your connection doesn't allow you to receive large amounts of email, junk or not, you can just submit your question without subscribing, and you will only receive answers from that thread. This is what I mean by "excellent service", it's a lot like what you get from a commercial support contract, only run entirely by volunteers who are on the lists. > > I am on at least 8 other mailing lists that allow user posting and > FreeBSD-Questions is the ONLY one that I see this problem on! > (including the other FreeBSD lists I subscribe to) I am also subscribed to several closed mailing lists, and they do have less spam sent directly to the list (although even on the freebsd-questions list this has never been more than about 5% of the total volume in my experience). On the other hand, spammers do subscibe to these mailing lists as well so as soon as I post a message to any of these lists, the email address I used will be harvested and get spammed. This amounts to the majority of spam I receive and has nothing to do with the list being open or closed. Also on these other lists I have seen members hit by virusses and spamming the list with virus-infected emails, just like recently on freebsd-questions. > > Either there should be some virus-scanning mechanism deployed > (something several of the lists I'm on do), something should be done > about moderation (ie assign several people the ability to temporarily > block traffic from certain senders) or the idea of allowing posting > from anywhere should be reconsidered. I agree on all but your last option, for reasons I gave above. The problem here I think is not what should be done, but what can be done. For example I believe the list allready is moderated (sometimes certain senders do get blocked), but as everything in FreeBSD this is a volunteers effort, and noone probably has the time to monitor the list 24x7 so the mechanism is far from watertight. If I am right and the situation can be improved by having more people monitor the list, I would be happy to spent some of my time helping out here. The other option you gave, scanning for virusses, should indeed be considered. But installing a virus-scanning mechanism on an allready heavy loaded server like hub.freebsd.org is not something you do overnight. It is highly likely that it will require a hardware upgrade just to handle the extra load from the virus scanning processes (I speak from experience here) and who is going to pay for that? > > > Phil > > > > -- > Philip J. Koenig pjklist@ekahuna.com > Electric Kahuna Systems -- Computers & Communications for the New Millenium > -- Ruben de Groot Systems & Network Manager Bzerk Internet Services -------------------------------------------- Complex problems have simple, easy to find, wrong answers. ------------------------------- Orwell ----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020623131923.A42352>