On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 08:11:43PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > On 7/16/02 5:57 PM, "Jay R. Ashworth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> But without rules, you can't teach the recipient what's right (with a cattle > >> prod, if necessary), and without rules, the lynch mob has no binding > >> authority. > > > > Where, by "rules", here, we mean "rules about what is acceptable mail"? > > Well, we're talking past each other a little bit, but at the same time, not.
I'm so glad you've cleared that up, Chuq. ;-) > Because I think there's still a responsibility on the list admin, because > when someone signs up for a list, they're delegating some responsibility > over who can access their mailbox to the owner of the list, and the > agreement between the two are the rules set up about acceptable content. So > you can't duck some responsibility here. You can document your policies, and the person who wants to sign up can decide whether they can deal. > Oh, by the way, there's few ways guaranteed to PISS ME OFF more than someone > who signs up for a mailing list, and then starts bouncing selected pieces of > the mail because of filtering systems. Which usually happens because their > admin installs stupid filters... (I don't care if you throw them away, but I > hate showing up in the morning to 50 bounce messages because of some flakey > content filter...) That's why I never *bounce*. I either drop, or file. > Right now, for instance, one of the lists at apple is having a discussion > about coding problems. And the user starting it served up a code fragment > that included: > > int xxx = 0 > [...] > > You can imagine the chaos that ensues among the STUPID IS FILTER IDIOTS who > do overly simplistic filtering and assume it actually does something useful. :-) > But I'm not bitter. Naw. Not at all. > (and I'll be curious to see just how many bounces that I or barry see from > THAT simple notation.....) Yeah, RISKS gets this all the time. > > That sentence seems to assume that the majority of the people *falling > > in* the tarpits are people doing it by accident. I don't think that > > and I don't think *you* think that. > > Yes, I do. Since I (for the most part, most of the time) have the felons > locked out of the system pretty well, most of the people who cause problems > on my systems aren't trying to f--k with the system, they're people who are > oblivious, confused, or misguided. Even the spammer over the weekend meant > no harm, which doesn't mean harm wasn't caused. It was a classiv case of "my > cause is so important it justifies doing this" -- which, he found out the > hard way, a few hundred people disagreed with him over. Yeah. I keep forgetting that not everyone has spent 17 years on Usenet. But that brings us almost immediately around to "why use email to do a Usenet's job"... which *LOTS* of mailing lists are doing, frankly. In these days where the majority of newsreaders *do* understand multiple servers, that may no longer be warranted. > > By which I meant, "sigs of people in your address book." No, this > > doesn't solve the "stupid user" problem... but you don't *solve* that > > with technology. > > > > You solve it with a LART. > > Sometimes, the best solution is a public flogging, to teach everyone else to > be more careful next time. But if you overdo it, people tune you out, too. You've jumped ship before. So have I. They'll learn, eventually. > > Stipulated, but they're 80-90% of the market. I think even skewing for > > "non-Windoze users send more mail, you would still be about 70%, > > intuitively. > > We're working on that (a quiet voice whispers: "but a f---ing mac already! > It has unix inside for all you geeks, too!") <roar> > > Chasing people who directly harvest your listmanagement machine in > > person seems quite another. > > > > *That* you can't do on a case by case basis? Are you getting harvested > > every 5 minutes? > > You want to find out? Create a honeypot. Put some email addresses on it. > Attach it to your home page. See how quickly you start getting e-mail to > those addresses. > > You'll usually find the answer is "days". Once in a while, it's "hours". My sister runs a page that's always in the top 3 on Google in her keyword, on a user-named account on Mind-link. Been there over 6 years now. She's had a pseudo-bogus address in her POP3 domain buried in a mailto: on there for over a year. *One* piece of spam. She's not exactly a low profile target. You, OTOH, are. How well "hidden" were your honeypot machines? "plaidworks.com" is likely not a low-profile domain, neither. You put your honeypots in *Jellystone*, you get more bears... > > No, I mean in other cases. You're using webharvesting, it seems, as > > your major motivation here; it doesn't seem to me -- please don't take > > this wrong -- that there's evidence that it's really a big enough > > problem to solve (for people who don't send 40M pieces of email an > > hour). > > I don't think you're looking close enough. Run a few honeypot tests and see > how often people sneak a peek at YOUR system. On mine, it's a few days. Yaeh, but see above. Barry? You've been cowering in the corner there, letting us imitate Spenser and Hawk working up to it; comments? :-) Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Florida http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?" -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk") _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman-21/listinfo/mailman-developers
