On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 02:45:24PM -0400, Bruce Dawson wrote:
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> I'd recommend sending this to the -org list so they can comment on it.
>
> - --Bruce
>
> Jeff Kinz wrote:
> |After one morning of checking rejecting non-member submitted spam
> |I can see that this will get annoying over time.
Note: Although this refers to the gnhlug-org list, it also be applied to
the "discuss" list as well.
> |
> |I didn't realize that the list was getting many spam attempts.
> |(Stupid of me, spam is pervasive.)
> |
> |It would be easier if we could moderate via email only. I perused the
> |code for mailman 2.0.13 and 2.1.5 (the latest) and some of the code is
> |there to support this but its not done yet.
> |
> |I have an idea than can help reduce the amount of human intervention
> |needed. No code changes are needed in the mailman GNHLUG is running.
> |
> |The basic idea is:
> |
> | reject all non member emails
> |
> | rejection message tells submitter to resend their messages to
> | "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". This inherently acts as a first level filter
> | since most of the from addresses are bogus.
Note: the e-mail address does not have to be at kinz.org. That mail
alias is already set up and working in the fashion described below:
I'm sure that the the same could be set up anywhere it is desired, but
will require an integrated/plug-in spam filtering capability and mail
forwarding system plus a database trained on a decent sized population
of spam and non spam examples.
> |
> | The email user "gnhmod" filters emails through a Bayesian spam
> | filter and if the message passes that check, will be sent on to
> | one of two places: (You decide)
> |
> | 1: Automatically submitted to the discuss list with a
> | note at the top indicating it was a moderated
> | message
> |
> | 2: forwarded to a human(s) for a final check before
> | being allowed in.
> |
> |I have written and tested the scripting to do this already.
CHANGES to existing mailman system:
> |We would need to change the mailman configuration to reject all
> |non-members messages and change the template text being sent out in the
> |rejection message to indicate what email address to submit the message
> |to.
ANALYSIS:
there are at least two drawbacks to the system:
1. The rejection messages will be sent to the from address
contained in the original e-mail. Most of those addresses will not
exist or will have been forged. This will cause some innocent people to
receive messages that say an e-mail they never sent has been
rejected, and the GNHLUG e-mail server will get more "undeliverable
e-mail" messages.
2. The humans in the chain will have to forward the
e-mails which get past the spam filters to the e-mail list manually.
This isn't hard of course, a mutt macro, or a procmail recipe can reduce
the work involved to a single keypress or two. So far it looks like
only a few of these will exist per month.
3. this one isn't a drawback, but is a response to a
potentially perceived drawback. False positives. It is a valid concern
that any spam filtering system may potentially identify a non spam
e-mail as a piece of spam. My current system, which is built on
bogofilter, has had no false positives for many months. I am a little
conservative. My system does currently let some spam through, on the
order of two or three a week. However the idea above can use any spam
filtering system desired including the ever popular Spam-Assassin.
The best part about this is that only e-mails from people who are not
members of the e-mail list will be scanned for spam content. Since there
are only a few of these this will not add any appreciable amount to the
load on the system.
--
Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.
speech recognition software used to create this e-mail
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