Re: Pornography
On Thu March 20 2003 12:01, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM wrote: So unsubscribe. Probably the amanda people would not appreciate that statement. At risk of adding fuel to this current out of control wildfire, I'm not an 'amanda' author if thats what you mean, but I am an 'amanda' user, and I fully understand that this is a 100% volunteer effort. No one can post to this list who is not subscribed unless it does clear the list owners scrutiny. I know, I've argued my way past that a time or two while I was changing addresses and such. AFAIK, the listserver is not an open relay, or it would find itself on the various rbl listers pages very quickly. This means that either the stuff is coming to you directly, which this list cannot do one thing about, and that the address was harvested from the lists archives which are as a matter of policy, freely readable by the public. I don't personally use spamassasin, so I get a rather large amount of it if I haven't updated my filters recently, and its a tossup right now as I catch up on a weeks absence and something over 1500 messages in the inbox, what my percentage of 'catching' it was. I'm tired and would guess that more than 25% got by the filters I use here with kmail on a linux box. In short, if your network people cannot seem to grasp the concept of a mail filter, beit spamassasin or whatever might be available for your platform ( I also understand that you may not have any choice there also), and they cannot accept the fact that some unwanted spam IS going to find its way into your inbox, then your only alternative is to unsubscribe, and then shut the machine down since unsubscribing will not at this point in time effect the amount of spam you get for several weeks, possibly much longer. There is much good information here, information that can make your job if its amanda related, go much more smoothly and effortlessly. If TPTB insist that there is a zero incoming spam tolerance, and would use forensic tools on the hard drive to enforce something that neither of us has any great amount of power over other than using the quite readily available filtering tools, then they are IMNSHO, cutting off their nose because they don't like what the mirror is showing them. That will be their loss, and I for one will not issue a single syllable in favor of closeing this lists archives, or of instituting any other procedure that will prevent the open and spontainious, occasionally even off-topic, discussions that take place here. In other words, AFAIAC you can either unsubscribe and sledgehammer the hard drive, or you can install the freely available filters, and in this case one of those over-write it a hundred times from /dev/urandom, anything that shows up to be deleted thingies. There are, after all, secure delete tools available for nearly all intel based systems, and for many of the m68k and ppc based systems... Also, you may find yourself with legal problems if you allow someone to post illegal material to your list. Oh please, what are you trying to threaten people because you can't be bothered to filter your own email? Why don't we just censor all information. That way we'll all have more freedom, right? I'm looking at it from the perspective that you can get sued if you don't take care to make reasonable precautions to protect the information that comes off your server from containing illegal content. Moderated lists create an undue burden on these people that are just volunteers, and slow down the discussions. Every other list I subscribe to is moderated. Thats your problem. One thing you wouldn't see on such a list is a free discussion of this problem such as you are seeing here and now. Go read our Bill of Rights, particularly the first 2. It can be Very Educational... Tell ya what, if this list is so important to you, why don't you setup a subserver thats subscribed to this list, and delegate about 5 or 6 full time folks to moderate whats allowed thru it to you as a subscriber to this 'relay' server. What, you don't have the resources to do that? Neither do we, and thats not about to change unless some corporate sponser comes up with about $150k/annum to fund it. That kind of money usually comes with strings, and I for one ain't no dd puppet... Mike -- Cheers, Gene AMD [EMAIL PROTECTED] 320M [EMAIL PROTECTED] 512M 99.24% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
RE: Pornography
I hope they don't search for the word Pornography, or they are going to be really happy with the spam in our list in the few last days :) Please, could you stop with the discussion with cc to the list? I don't care about the porn spam, but the pointless discussion is not of my interest.- Kind Regards. _ Pablo Jejcic Smartweb Senior system Administrator School of Computing - Robert Gordon University [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ ``The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. And if you really don't like all the standards you just have to wait another year until the one arises you are looking for.'' A. Tanenbaum, ``Introduction to Computer Networks' _ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM Sent: 20 March 2003 17:04 To: 'Joshua Baker-LePain'; Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM Cc: 'Seth, Wayne (Contractor)'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: Pornography All I know is, none of the other email lists I subscribe to have this problem. I'm not just going around blatantly complaining to every list about any little old issue that comes up. I mean, with this list here, it's really getting annoying receiving so much spam. Martinez, Michael CSREES/ISTM/USDA -Original Message- From: Joshua Baker-LePain [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 8:44 AM To: Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM Cc: 'Seth, Wayne (Contractor)'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: Pornography On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 at 8:02am, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM wrote I think you should implement a spam prevention policy and a moderated list. Are you volunteering to be moderator? I'm not at all involved with running this list, but it seems to me that, given the pretty high traffic, moderating it would take a fair bit of time. Just my $.02. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Re: Pornography
Warning: bullshit rant follows. Delete at will please, totally off topic. Mitch Collinsworth on Thu 20/03 17:31 -0500: Have we reached the point yet where the spam discussion has generated more list messages today than all the spam that's crossed it in the past year? Thank you for injecting some sanity. Sorry, I get carried away. I'm strongly opinionated about spam. In one sense, it's just the same as any old salesman coming up to you in a store: something you have to learn to deal with if you agree to live in a capitalist society. In another sense, it's junk I want to get rid of. I don't personally mind the spam; I've calculated that it only takes me six seconds per day to delete the spam (it's all very easy to identify; I get about 30-50 per day). What bothers me is when people post to the list and say that the list should be moderated, or that someone should be doing post filtering on every single list, rather than the end recipients doing UCE filtering (however they want to implement it), which covers ALL their mail. Spam is everyone's problem, and when people try to insist that someone else should take care of it for them, I really take offense (although I should not, admittedly). Especially when they bully someone else with threats of legal action, and threaten to disjoin the list. Good riddens...if censorship and oppression are a good tactic for government recipients, then get the hell off our community list. Sorry, I'm just a lurking, rare poster, but I've been doing this for a number of years and it really bothers me when someone takes this free, volunteer assistance for granted and tries to make it live up to their rules. They might be accustomed to having anti-porn rules shoved down their throat, but that's their CHOICE to work for such an entity, and they have no business forcing it down MY throat, or any other list recipient. I just get ornery when this happens; sorry to fill your inbox with even more junk, but I feel that it's important to point out since this same lesson carries over to innumerable similar lists.
Re: Pornography
Kirk Strauser on Thu 20/03 18:33 -0600: There is no reason someone should not want to subscribe to the list to post. That's not true: Oh, crap, my server just melted, and I'm having trouble getting Amanda to work! I need an answer ASAP! I know, I'll send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] from my home email address, even though I don't want to flood my slow home connection with a bunch of mailing lists... honestly...just give up this garbage. Even if you post when you aren't subscribed, you STILL have to read the following posts through a gateway (or whatever) to determine if they are related to YOUR post. There is no difference: do it through a web gateway, or do it through you mail user agent. If you say but they CC me then I will say that that is fortunate for you, but not guaranteed (some people insist on this, and some people hate it -- welcome to mailing lists). Stop expecting other people to shoulder your burden. If you can't subscribe before you post, then you shouldn't friggin' post. Arrgh this is annoying. What is so hard to understand? It's a cooperative venture for LOTS of people, not one provided for your benefit. Sorry, I will shut up now.
Re: Pornography
At 2003-03-21T09:22:37Z, Scott Mcdermott [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Kirk Strauser on Thu 20/03 18:33 -0600: honestly...just give up this garbage. OK, I was attempting to keep this at an adult level. I didn't realize that you did not wish to do so. Even if you post when you aren't subscribed, you STILL have to read the following posts through a gateway (or whatever) to determine if they are related to YOUR post. There is no difference: do it through a web gateway, or do it through you mail user agent. If you say but they CC me then I will say that that is fortunate for you, but not guaranteed (some people insist on this, and some people hate it -- welcome to mailing lists). I've seen requests like this on various mailing lists with much higher traffic all the time. You know, I've been here a while, and if I see a request for help from Gene Heskett asking for a reply via CC because his server is down, I'm darn well going to answer it. Furthermore, I'm sure he'd do the same for me. A technical list whose subject matter will necessarily involved crippled servers from time to time is far different from, say, a threaded discussion of Britney Spears. Stop expecting other people to shoulder your burden. If you can't subscribe before you post, then you shouldn't friggin' post. Why on Earth would you assume this is for my benefit? I'm *ON* this list. Unless something catastrophic happens, I have no problems asking for or getting help via this mailing list. Is it unimaginable that I may want to leave an avenue of emergency help for others? Arrgh this is annoying. What is so hard to understand? It's a cooperative venture for LOTS of people, not one provided for your benefit. Sorry, Scott, but you seem to have posted without knowing what you're talking about it. Sorry, I will shut up now. Thanks. -- Kirk Strauser In Googlis non est, ergo non est. pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Pornography
I will reiterate what I posted to the list several months ago. This is for the list maintainer: If you maintain an open and unmoderated list, eventually the spam and offensive material that hits this list is going to become too much for folks. Also, you may find yourself with legal problems if you allow someone to post illegal material to your list. Us folks that work in government have strict rules about pornography and are under surveillance from our Security people who are on the watch for this kind of activity. Folks like Wayne (below) and myself find ourselves running a risk when we subscribe to your list. I would hate to have to un-subscribe ... I think you should implement a spam prevention policy and a moderated list. Martinez, Michael CSREES/ISTM/USDA -Original Message- From: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:09 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Pornography Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me. Wayne Seth COE Lab Manager 520-538-0110 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pornography
On Wed, 19 Mar 2003 at 4:09pm, Seth, Wayne (Contractor) wrote Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me. To be clear, is the spam coming directly to your address, or to the amanda list? (I don't see it, because I run spamassassin on my mail server). No one but you can unsubscribe you. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
RE: Pornography
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 at 8:02am, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM wrote I think you should implement a spam prevention policy and a moderated list. Are you volunteering to be moderator? I'm not at all involved with running this list, but it seems to me that, given the pretty high traffic, moderating it would take a fair bit of time. Just my $.02. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
RE: Pornography
Joshua, The spam comes both ways. In all cases so far, the message part is in several foreign languages, so probably not from one source. My feeling is that somehow the spammers have gotten into to amanda user-list database and are using it directly. Wayne Seth COE Lab Manager 520-538-0110 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Joshua Baker-LePain [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:42 AM To: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Re: Pornography On Wed, 19 Mar 2003 at 4:09pm, Seth, Wayne (Contractor) wrote Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me. To be clear, is the spam coming directly to your address, or to the amanda list? (I don't see it, because I run spamassassin on my mail server). No one but you can unsubscribe you. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
RE: Pornography
If the spam was directly to you and not through the list, then the reason is that the spammers search through webpages for email addresses, and since most mailing lists have a web-archive, you really cannot expect your email address to remain private after you post to a mailing list. Stopping mail going indirectly through the mailing list should be easy thou, using tools like spamassassin. -Frank. From: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:09 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Pornography Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me.
Re: Pornography
Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM on Thu 20/03 08:02 -0500: I will reiterate what I posted to the list several months ago. This is for the list maintainer: If you maintain an open and unmoderated list, eventually the spam and offensive material that hits this list is going to become too much for folks. So unsubscribe. Also, you may find yourself with legal problems if you allow someone to post illegal material to your list. Oh please, what are you trying to threaten people because you can't be bothered to filter your own email? Why don't we just censor all information. That way we'll all have more freedom, right? Us folks that work in government have strict rules about pornography and are under surveillance from our Security people who are on the watch for this kind of activity. So get a new job. Folks like Wayne (below) and myself find ourselves running a risk when we subscribe to your list. I would hate to have to un-subscribe Frankly, I'd rather that you did, personally. Rather than complaining and trying to make every mailing list owner do your administrator's job to filter spam, you could just leave the list and stop whining. I think you should implement a spam prevention policy and a moderated list. Moderated lists create an undue burden on these people that are just volunteers, and slow down the discussions.
RE: Pornography
The best solution is probably the easiest to do. Restrict the mail relay for the mailing list to members only. Whenever a member spams the list, he/she/it is removed from the list and banned for some period of time (1 to 6 months seems reasonable). Junk spams from outsiders should be dropped without comment. Mail from anyone else gets a reply that indicates that they should join the list to post to it. That's the way most of the lists I subscribe to are run. Can we consider it for Amanda's? Thanks for reading. Now back to your daily dose of SPAM. (Note: Attempted humor here.) Don Donald L. (Don) Ritchey E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 8:22 AM To: 'Joshua Baker-LePain'; Seth, Wayne (Contractor) Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: Pornography Joshua, The spam comes both ways. In all cases so far, the message part is in several foreign languages, so probably not from one source. My feeling is that somehow the spammers have gotten into to amanda user-list database and are using it directly. Wayne Seth COE Lab Manager 520-538-0110 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Joshua Baker-LePain [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 6:42 AM To: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Re: Pornography On Wed, 19 Mar 2003 at 4:09pm, Seth, Wayne (Contractor) wrote Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me. To be clear, is the spam coming directly to your address, or to the amanda list? (I don't see it, because I run spamassassin on my mail server). No one but you can unsubscribe you. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University This e-mail and any of its attachments may contain Exelon Corporation proprietary information, which is privileged, confidential, or subject to copyright belonging to the Exelon Corporation family of Companies. This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout. Thank You.
RE: Pornography
On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 05:43, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 at 8:02am, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM wrote I think you should implement a spam prevention policy and a moderated list. Are you volunteering to be moderator? My $0.02: unmoderated. I very clearly hear and understand the concerns of those worried about their employer reaction... However, on other moderated lists I'm on, I find that the response-time is 'way slow (if the admin gathers/vets/approves all postings before they go out), and there is notably less open discussion. Also, as pointed out, the claim on the moderator's time can be *huge*. I really, really hate spam, but I think this cure may be even worse... -Gord -- Gordon Pritchard, P.Eng. | Institute of Electrical and Research Labs Manager| Electronics Engineers Simon Fraser University, Surrey | Quarter Century Wireless Ass'n [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Telephone Pioneers of America phone: 604.268.7509 | Amateur Radio: VA7SFU
Re: Pornography
[EMAIL PROTECTED] on Thu 20/03 08:58 -0600: Whenever a member spams the list, he/she/it is removed from the list and banned for some period of time (1 to 6 months seems reasonable). this doesn't help the main problem, which is list archive address harvesting. There is no solution to this problem.
RE: Pornography
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Seth, Wayne (Contractor) wrote: several foreign languages, so probably not from one source. My feeling is that somehow the spammers have gotten into to amanda user-list database and are using it directly. Or perhaps they've found your email address in a post on one of the many public-accessable web mirror of the mailing list? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amanda-users/message/42277 or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amanda-users/messagesearch?query=Seth%2C%20Wayne for instance. Subscribing and posting to a public mailing list leaves you open to such situations. Perhaps in the future you should post to public mailing list from either a disposable email address or from an address that does not suffer from the...restrictive oversite...that your current subscription address is afflicted with. ...david --- david raistrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
RE: Pornography
Albert, Am I correct in assuming you have not been introduced to the military? The phrases US Military, should be, and reality in the same sentence is a contradiction. The reality is that the military, and the us government in general, seem to have a severe case of pornophobia (is that a word?). Employees of the government must abide by very strict rules that are rigidly enforced. Believe it or not, working for the military isn't all bad. There are many benefits. However, the attitude regarding pornography is what it is. -Original Message- From: Albert Hopkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 8:11 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: Pornography The amanda mailing lists are, to the best of my knowledge, archived and available on the web. So basically if you can parse email addresses out of HTML documents on the web then it's easy to get spam once you post to an archived mailing list. It comes with the territory. The U.S. military should be able to deal with the realities of spam. I can't see that they can just turn their backs and pretend that their users are not going to get spammed at some point, especially if they're using public Internet email addresses. --a On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 08:21, Seth, Wayne (Contractor) wrote: Joshua, The spam comes both ways. In all cases so far, the message part is in several foreign languages, so probably not from one source. My feeling is that somehow the spammers have gotten into to amanda user-list database and are using it directly. Wayne Seth COE Lab Manager 520-538-0110 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Pornography
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, David Raistrick wrote: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amanda-users/message/42277 Of course, now I notice that groups.yahoo is finally obfuscating the email addresses. Other list archives are not, though: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=amanda-usersm=104812034407134w=2 --- david raistrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
RE: Pornography
All I know is, none of the other email lists I subscribe to have this problem. I'm not just going around blatantly complaining to every list about any little old issue that comes up. I mean, with this list here, it's really getting annoying receiving so much spam. Martinez, Michael CSREES/ISTM/USDA -Original Message- From: Joshua Baker-LePain [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 8:44 AM To: Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM Cc: 'Seth, Wayne (Contractor)'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: Pornography On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 at 8:02am, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM wrote I think you should implement a spam prevention policy and a moderated list. Are you volunteering to be moderator? I'm not at all involved with running this list, but it seems to me that, given the pretty high traffic, moderating it would take a fair bit of time. Just my $.02. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Re: Pornography
Seth, I'm not getting that spam via the list. maybe my address got out that way but its not the vector for the incoming. Brian If the spam was directly to you and not through the list, then the reason is that the spammers search through webpages for email addresses, and since most mailing lists have a web-archive, you really cannot expect your email address to remain private after you post to a mailing list. Stopping mail going indirectly through the mailing list should be easy thou, using tools like spamassassin. -Frank. From: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:09 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Pornography Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me.
RE: Pornography
So unsubscribe. Probably the amanda people would not appreciate that statement. Also, you may find yourself with legal problems if you allow someone to post illegal material to your list. Oh please, what are you trying to threaten people because you can't be bothered to filter your own email? Why don't we just censor all information. That way we'll all have more freedom, right? I'm looking at it from the perspective that you can get sued if you don't take care to make reasonable precautions to protect the information that comes off your server from containing illegal content. Moderated lists create an undue burden on these people that are just volunteers, and slow down the discussions. Every other list I subscribe to is moderated. Mike
Re: Pornography
Brian Cuttler wrote: Seth, I'm not getting that spam via the list. maybe my address got out that way but its not the vector for the incoming. That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. Why is the list set up to allow non-subscribers to post to it? Marty -- Marty Shannon, RHCE (@ home) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pornography
On Thursday 20 March 2003 11:34 am, Scott Mcdermott wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Thu 20/03 08:58 -0600: Whenever a member spams the list, he/she/it is removed from the list and banned for some period of time (1 to 6 months seems reasonable). this doesn't help the main problem, which is list archive address harvesting. There is no solution to this problem. Anyone can get a free email account from Yahoo, provided your company/agency allows web access. Just sign up for one, and when you post to public forums, do so from that address.
RE: Pornography
For the Spam mails that I have been receiving, each of them have gone through the mail list server. Maybe I am missing the ones that our corporate mail server blocks? Don Donald L. (Don) Ritchey E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: Scott Mcdermott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 10:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Pornography [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Thu 20/03 08:58 -0600: Whenever a member spams the list, he/she/it is removed from the list and banned for some period of time (1 to 6 months seems reasonable). this doesn't help the main problem, which is list archive address harvesting. There is no solution to this problem. This e-mail and any of its attachments may contain Exelon Corporation proprietary information, which is privileged, confidential, or subject to copyright belonging to the Exelon Corporation family of Companies. This e-mail is intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying, or action taken in relation to the contents of and attachments to this e-mail is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete the original and any copy of this e-mail and any printout. Thank You.
Re: Pornography
I use spamassasin. And I've never seen porno from this list. Although I don't think I'd mind too much (hehehe...). quit your whining and filter spam. The list is not the cause of spam, spammers are. Frank Tore Johansen wrote: If the spam was directly to you and not through the list, then the reason is that the spammers search through webpages for email addresses, and since most mailing lists have a web-archive, you really cannot expect your email address to remain private after you post to a mailing list. Stopping mail going indirectly through the mailing list should be easy thou, using tools like spamassassin. -Frank. From: Seth, Wayne (Contractor) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 6:09 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: Pornography Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me.
RE: Pornography
One of the things that might help is to limit majordomo's who access to list members. I have tried this from a yahoo account, [EMAIL PROTECTED] is happy to supply me with a list of all subscribers to the amanda-users list. I suppose it would do so for the other lists as well. I see no reason why anyone should get the list of subscribers, especially not someone who does not even subscribe. I speak from experience; I once set up a list without restricting who-access for a company-internal list, and that list got spammed. No one on the outside could subscribe, but they could get the list of subscribers. BTW, this is my first post to this list, so my e-mail address would probably not have been in any archive. And yes, I too I noticed a marked increase in all kinds of spam, even in Turkish (which I do not understand, but can identify) since I subscribed to this list. So, please deny who-access, at least to those not on the list. It might help reduce spam, at least for new subscribers. Those who have previously subscribed are probably in the spammers' databases already... Thank you, Carsten At 07:11 20-03-03, Albert Hopkins wrote: The amanda mailing lists are, to the best of my knowledge, archived and available on the web. So basically if you can parse email addresses out of HTML documents on the web then it's easy to get spam once you post to an archived mailing list. It comes with the territory. The U.S. military should be able to deal with the realities of spam. I can't see that they can just turn their backs and pretend that their users are not going to get spammed at some point, especially if they're using public Internet email addresses. --a On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 08:21, Seth, Wayne (Contractor) wrote: Joshua, The spam comes both ways. In all cases so far, the message part is in several foreign languages, so probably not from one source. My feeling is that somehow the spammers have gotten into to amanda user-list database and are using it directly. Wayne Seth COE Lab Manager 520-538-0110 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Carsten P. Gehrke mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pornography
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 at 12:46pm, Marty Shannon, RHCE wrote I'm not getting that spam via the list. maybe my address got out that way but its not the vector for the incoming. That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. Why is the list set up to allow non-subscribers to post to it? To allow open discussion. Most lists *I'm* on are like this (and unmoderated). -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Re: Pornography
Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: On Thu, 20 Mar 2003 at 12:46pm, Marty Shannon, RHCE wrote I'm not getting that spam via the list. maybe my address got out that way but its not the vector for the incoming. That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. Why is the list set up to allow non-subscribers to post to it? To allow open discussion. Most lists *I'm* on are like this (and unmoderated). Ok, is it worth: subscribers getting spammed; the additional load/cost on the server (and recipients) to send (and recieve) spam that will ostensibly never be seen; the loss of subscribers who can neither filter their email (companies/organizations do not necessarily behave rationally) nor access an external mail address (perhaps due to privacy issues)? I think not. *All* lists *I'm* on -- with the exception of this one -- do not permit any access by non-subscribers (except to subscribe, of course). Marty -- Marty Shannon, RHCE (@ home) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pornography
Marty Shannon, RHCE on Thu 20/03 12:46 -0500: That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. I don't get any spam off the amanda-users list either btw. What must be happening is that the spammers are forging from-headers and sending to addresses they have harvested form the list. They forge the from-header to look like the address of the email system that sends out the mails to the recipients they harvested. This isn't unusual. I'm sure there are automatons sitting on the list collecting addresses, and anyone that has gotten a mail from the list knows where they are sent from.
RE: Pornography
Every other list I subscribe to is moderated. Really? Are you sure that they don't simply restrict posting by requiring a subscription to post? A classic moderated list requires each individual message to be approved by a human before it is distributed to the list. This requires much more operator overhead. (and you think posting times to the list are extremem now...) There are many moderated lists, but most of them are very low traffic lists, usually for announcements etc. ...david --- david raistrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Re: Pornography
Maybe I'm just wrong. I guess I could be getting spam from the list that comes with the originator's email address rather than something indicating amanda in name or subject. I take it all back, I don't know. All I know is that I'm not in a position where subscription to a valid work related maillist that received occasional spam is able to cause reprecussions for me. That and I'm pretty handy with the delete key, anything that is in HTML or meantions my size in the first two lines goes. Brian Cuttler wrote: Seth, I'm not getting that spam via the list. maybe my address got out that way but its not the vector for the incoming. That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. Why is the list set up to allow non-subscribers to post to it? Marty -- Marty Shannon, RHCE (@ home) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pornography
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 12:46:18PM -0500, Marty Shannon, RHCE wrote: Why is the list set up to allow non-subscribers to post to it? Ummm... Because people who don't subscribe to the list might want to ask a question about amana?
Re: Pornography
Scott Mcdermott wrote: Marty Shannon, RHCE on Thu 20/03 12:46 -0500: That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. I don't get any spam off the amanda-users list either btw. What must be happening is that the spammers are forging from-headers and sending to addresses they have harvested form the list. They forge the from-header to look like the address of the email system that sends out the mails to the recipients they harvested. No, I've checked. The spam is being sent through the list mail server, suggesting that omniscient.com has enabled foreign relaying. The spam does not have the normal set of headers you would expect from a legitimate list message, but it does have a legitimate origin in omniscient.com. Perhaps they're not as omniscient as they think? :-) Marty -- Marty Shannon, RHCE (@ home) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pornography
Marty Shannon, RHCE on Thu 20/03 13:50 -0500: *All* lists *I'm* on -- with the exception of this one -- do not permit any access by non-subscribers (except to subscribe, of course). Agreed. This is standard practice on most lists and cuts down radically on direct spam to the list itself. There is no reason someone should not want to subscribe to the list to post. It doesn't stifle openness either...not sure what argument there is for that. No one is preventing a subscriber from posting or delaying his post. And in most cases the subscription process takes less than a minute.
Re: Pornography
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 12:01:26PM -0500, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM wrote: Also, you may find yourself with legal problems if you allow someone to post illegal material to your list. Oh please, what are you trying to threaten people because you can't be bothered to filter your own email? Why don't we just censor all information. That way we'll all have more freedom, right? I'm looking at it from the perspective that you can get sued if you don't take care to make reasonable precautions to protect the information that comes off your server from containing illegal content. a) Which illegal content would that be? (Note that the content of spam is, ne general, perfectly legal. The method of distributing it may be illegal in some areas, but the content is not.) b) While I can see a case being made that a moderated list must make reasonable precautions to keep the content legal, I suspect that an unmoderated list would be considered more akin to a common carrier (e.g., telephone companies) than a content provider (e.g., newspapers or magazines), which places responsibility for list posts right back where it belongs: With the person who posts it, not the list admin. (IANAL, TINLA, etc.) c) I've never heard of a list admin even being threatened with legal action over the content of list messages except in cases where the list was explicitly dedicated to the distribution of illegal content.
Re: Pornography
[EMAIL PROTECTED](Scott Mcdermott) 20.03.03 11:34 Once upon a time Scott Mcdermott shaped the electrons to say... [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Thu 20/03 08:58 -0600: Whenever a member spams the list, he/she/it is removed from the list and banned for some period of time (1 to 6 months seems reasonable). this doesn't help the main problem, which is list archive address harvesting. There is no solution to this problem. As i wrote in an other mail: Use 2 different addresse: one stable to receive all of the list and one expiring to mail to the list. I have no problem with a closed list. The disadvantange that i have to subscribe the list every time i get a new address is minor. That expiring address may be stolen by spammers: They just fill up there database with garbage after sometime. IIRC there are cloaking programms for mailing lists.(exim?) In the mail is only a onetime address. The real address of the sender is only known by the mailinglist robot. Rainer---= Vertraulich // // =--ocholl, Kiel, Germany
Re: Pornography
[EMAIL PROTECTED](Seth, Wayne (Contractor)) 20.03.03 07:21 Joshua, The spam comes both ways. I searched and the last three spams went totally normally to amanda-user Be cause i never mail with my subscription address to any mailing list i can be quite sure that the database is not in the hand of spammers. Just look if all emails had the same return path. (not reply to/from) In all cases so far, the message part is in several foreign languages, so probably not from one source. My feeling is that somehow the spammers have gotten into to amanda user-list database and are using it directly. No. Possible but rediculess. That would be much too expensive for the spammers. Rule 1: Spammers are dangerous, stupid and lazy. To stop littering on the list there are 2..3 ways: 1) make the list closed so that only people who subscribed can mail. Reject mails of not subscribers (bouncing is no good idea, but better than discarding.) 2) Use spamassin or other bogos filters. (That may give lot of trouble if you are open to chinese too..) 3) allow only PGP sigend eMails, verified To avoid direct spam to my subscription address, i currently have to use a little trick (because the list software have no otehr way currently to cloak from-address). I subscribe twice: One subscription is on holidays since approx. 2032 (some list software are not 2032 proof). That address is used to mail to the list. The other address gets all mails from the list. I would recommend the list owner to make the list closed. To avoid spam it is completely sufficient to have no confirmed opt in. But of cause there are other _good_ reasons to use confirmations. If he as time, he may confirm the subscriptions on his own or let the robot do it automatically. The entry to the subscription robot should be RBL filtered, so that open relays or proxies can't be used to make anonymous subscribes. (If there is no confirmation requested that is a must, IMHO).
Re: Pornography
On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 02:19:54PM -0500, Scott Mcdermott wrote: Marty Shannon, RHCE on Thu 20/03 12:46 -0500: That's very odd. All the spam I get is through the list -- porn or otherwise. I don't get any spam off the amanda-users list either btw. I happen to archive the lists I read. Too much disk space I guess. I just scanned from Oct to present, over 3600 messages. I came up with 64 spam messages that came through the list. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
RE: Pornography
Is there some confusion here with terminology... moderated mailing list does not equal qualified-posting to mailing list... i.e. qualified by list membership... just checking if this is a misunderstanding amongst some subscribers? If so, this discussion for/against qualified posting has come up before... IIRC, posting was left open in case a person was having an Amanda problem while making a critical restore while simultaneously stranded in a remote location with only UUCP bang path capable e-mail software.
Re: Pornography
Brian Cuttler on Thu 20/03 15:21 -0500: That and I'm pretty handy with the delete key, anything that is in HTML or meantions my size in the first two lines goes. and sadly, that covers about 95% of spam :)
Re: Pornography
Dave Sherohman on Thu 20/03 14:36 -0600: Why is the list set up to allow non-subscribers to post to it? Ummm... Because people who don't subscribe to the list might want to ask a question about amana? ummm... we're supposed to all get spammed to accomodate the fact that you are too lazy to subscribe first, then unsubscribe when your question is answered?
Re: Pornography
c) I've never heard of a list admin even being threatened with legal action over the content of list messages except in cases where the list was explicitly dedicated to the distribution of illegal content. I believe this happened on the Exim list. and likely others...
Re: Pornography
On Thursday, March 20, 2003, at 03:42 PM, Scott Mcdermott wrote: Marty Shannon, RHCE on Thu 20/03 13:50 -0500: *All* lists *I'm* on -- with the exception of this one -- do not permit any access by non-subscribers (except to subscribe, of course). Agreed. This is standard practice on most lists and cuts down radically on direct spam to the list itself. There is no reason someone should not want to subscribe to the list to post. It doesn't stifle openness either...not sure what argument there is for that. No one is preventing a subscriber from posting or delaying his post. And in most cases the subscription process takes less than a minute. So, I just wanted to chime in: freebsd is another list that doesn't require subscription to send a message. Why? This allows you to say if you have any questions, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED]. You don't have to subscribe, you don't have to know you're getting to a list, etc. Several technical lists do things this way. Now, is this desired is another question. Do we want to make AMANDA approachable to all users? Or should we look only for those admins who have the technical knowledge to subscribe to a mailing list, and understand the implications. I don't know... FWIW, I prefer to let users take care of filtering, and make a resource available, but that make be too idealistic a point of view for the modern world... Ricky
Re: Pornography
Thomas Hu on Thu 20/03 17:26 -0500: Have we enjoyed talking about spam so far? Is this still an amanda list? Are we interested in spam more than in amanda? Finally, is enough enough? The same discussion occurs about every year or so on many lists. Those that aren't interested can hit their delete-thread key. It's something that affects all the list members and some are obviously quite concerned about it, so it's a valid list topic, IMO.
Re: Pornography
Have we reached the point yet where the spam discussion has generated more list messages today than all the spam that's crossed it in the past year? -Mitch
RE: Pornography
Have we enjoyed talking about spam so far? Is this still an amanda list? Are we interested in spam more than in amanda? Finally, is enough enough? Thomas
Re: Pornography
At 2003-03-20T13:02:16Z, Martinez, Michael - CSREES/ISTM [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Us folks that work in government have strict rules about pornography and are under surveillance from our Security people who are on the watch for this kind of activity. I'm sure that's true. I know that no security personnel have ever seen (or gasp! received!) pornspam before, and would therefore assume that you'd actually requested penis enlargement or Hot! Naked! Teens! information. -- Kirk Strauser In Googlis non est, ergo non est.
Re: Pornography
At 2003-03-20T20:42:52Z, Scott Mcdermott [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There is no reason someone should not want to subscribe to the list to post. That's not true: Oh, crap, my server just melted, and I'm having trouble getting Amanda to work! I need an answer ASAP! I know, I'll send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] from my home email address, even though I don't want to flood my slow home connection with a bunch of mailing lists... -- Kirk Strauser In Googlis non est, ergo non est.
Re: Pornography
Kirk Strauser wrote: At 2003-03-20T20:42:52Z, Scott Mcdermott [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There is no reason someone should not want to subscribe to the list to post. That's not true: Oh, crap, my server just melted, and I'm having trouble getting Amanda to work! I need an answer ASAP! I know, I'll send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] from my home email address, even though I don't want to flood my slow home connection with a bunch of mailing lists... You forgot the part about, But, my job is on the line, so I'll do whatever it takes to get this machine restored, and worry about unsubscribing later. Marty -- Marty Shannon, RHCE (@ home) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[off-topic, hopefully final word: spam to amanda lists] Re: Pornography
Have we enjoyed talking about spam so far? Is this still an amanda list? Are we interested in spam more than in amanda? Finally, is enough enough? The same discussion occurs about every year or so on many lists. Those that aren't interested can hit their delete-thread key. It's something that affects all the list members and some are obviously quite concerned about it, so it's a valid list topic, IMO. It's not. See http://www.amanda.org/ for the one setence charter for the list. Beyond that, the only person who can do anything about it really doesn't read amanda-users. The last time this came up was a little over six months ago and here's what I said last time. Everything still stands, although I didn't have the time in October I thought I would. It (or some simpler solution) still beckons from my list of things I really need to get to soon. I'm concerned about a lot of things that have nothing to do with amanda, but really there are other appropriate forums for discussing those and this just wastes everyone's time. please, everyone, this discussion is not accomplishing anything and it's already generated far more traffic than the spam that comes through the list does. Let's move on to what's on topic. If legal threats over this come to pass, that's the fastest way to shut down the mailing list itself. No volunteer in their right mind (certainly not this one) would spend their spare time doing something that's going to get them in legal trouble that benefits them about zero. I'm still waiting for volunteers, btw. Nobody has stepped up and offered to write any code to help deal with the problem. as before, please don't reply to this on the list. -Todd ---snip--- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: spam to amanda-users Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 16:12:21 -0400 From: Todd Kover [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please, please, please, let's take discussion of what to do about spam on amanda-users offline. It does nobody any good to debate dealing with spam on the list and it's unquestionably off-topic as much as the spam itself is. If it will make people feel better, I'll setup an unmoderated open list called [EMAIL PROTECTED] to give you a place to vent about it. To be frank, the list is not a democracy and it does no good to debate the topic here, especially since I (the guy who hosts the lists) do not read amanda-users that closely these days (it's as time permits but it's low on my list -- my day job is too consuming). All it's accomplishing is aggrevating folks. Given that over 50% of messages to amanda-users come from non-subscribers (I've done occasional spot checks of this over the past five or so years I've run amanda-users), it seems inappropriate to me to restrict it to non-subscribers. There are many other philosophies on this point and we can debate it again and again, but that won't likely change anything. All that having been said, (and with this message, I've probably already annoyed a bunch of people who will be sending unsubscription requests in response to what they think is an unreasonable attitude :-) I have some thoughts on how to deal with the spam better, and will likely be dropping something into place that interacts with spamassassin to make non-subscribers whose messages cross it's thresholds to have to manually acknowledge that they meant to send it. (similar in theory to the auth mechanisms in place with majordomo when you describe). This will likely not happen until at least October when I expect spare cycles to write up and test the scripts to do this. If someone is aware of something out there that already exists that does something along those lines please send mail to be privately and it will likely get done a lot faster. If you'd like to volunteer to write such a beast, please let me know privately. If you'd like to debate this matter with the people right now who can affect any change whatsoever, please direct it at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and not to the mailing list. However, that's most likely going to just delay implementation of the above since I'll be spending more time dealing with discussing what to do than actually doing. :-) please, please please do not reply to this message including the list and let's get the messages back to discussions about amanda. -Todd
Pornography
Since signing up on the Amanda list serve about 2 or 3 weeks ago, my e-mail address seems to have distributed to several pornographic spammers. Because of that, I cannot continue with the list. Please unsubscribe me. Wayne Seth COE Lab Manager 520-538-0110 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
