On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 06:04:11PM +0300, Gil Bahat wrote:
> I have good reason to believe this does not represent actual spam
> reporting [...]
Of course it doesn't. Users are...well they're not at all competent.
Not even remotely close. They routinely mark ordinary mailing list
traffic (such as that found on this one) as spam, they mark monthly
Mailman-generated reminders as spam, they mark personal correspondence
as spam, they even mark subscription confirmation requests (that they
initiated) as spam. Dave Crocker put it more gently than me,
but he was right when he said (on NANOG, I believe):
The best model to invoke, with respect to the idea of recruiting
end users to be active participants in abuse detection or
prevention is mostly:
Don't.
Under NO circumstances should users be permitted to directly affect
any anti-spam policy (or any other defensive policy, e.g., firewall
rules). It is clearly unprofessional, unethical, and irresponsible
to let them anywhere near the dials and knobs that control that machinery.
It's like letting crack monkeys hyper up on Red Bull loose in the
control room of a nuclear reactor.
I find it best to require that users who wish to report spam be told
to forward it -- with full headers -- to the appropriate local "abuse"
address. This serves as a useful clue level test and tends to result
in vastly higher quality reporting than giving them a button -- which
of course, they will push randomly. I also see that all such reports
are individually reviewed -- and expect exactly the same of others.
Accusing someone of spamming (whether directly or indirectly via mail
system policy modification) is a serious matter, and should not be done
without careful and manual expert-level review.
---rsk
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