We are definitely aware of the spam issue; we have some "evasion"
techniques in place on our mail gateways, and further content-based
filtering on all of our public mailing lists. The filtering is quite
effective, all things considered. In the last two months, there have
been 25 different attempts to spam the INFO-AFS mailing list. Only
five of those have actually gotten through the filtering; the
remaining 20 were dropped. When spam does make it through the filter,
we examine it, and then make changes to the filtering that would have
dropped that message, but probably not have effected legitimate
traffic.
>From time to time, someone raises the idea of making INFO-AFS postable
only by subscribers, which (in theory) would eliminate all spam from
the list. There are a couple of drawbacks to this approach, however:
1) If you are subscribed to INFO-AFS via a local redistribution
address, you will lose the ability to send to INFO-AFS - everyone
must have be individually subscribed to the list.
2) If the "From:" address set by your mailer is different from the
address under which you are subscribed, you will lose the ability
to send to INFO-AFS - your "From:" address must match *exactly*
the address we have on file in the INFO-AFS mailing list.
I can't speak officially for the folks who are organizationally
responsible for the mailing list, but I suspect that having a human
moderator and manually checking each post before it goes out is just
not practical.
But what do people think about the idea of making the list postable
only by subscribers? It has been brought up in the past, but we have
not done it because of items (1) an (2) above .... If you have an
opinion one way or the other, please let me know; I can use this
information to make a recommendation about what to do.
Please reply to me directly, I will summarize to the list if
appropriate.
--Pat Barron
(one of) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
