Re: Dealing with spam. (with mechanical assistance)
I wasn't suggesting that we can avoid such interference, merely that we stop taking the bait. Filtering can deal with much of it, although it is a hassle to constantly tune the filters. And also does pose the problem of missing actual good stuff if people respond under the old subject line. Ray Dillinger wrote: On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Harmon Seaver wrote: Frankly, I think that all the egroup subscriptions and trolls are from LEO's who are carrying out a deliberate campaign to destroy the cypherpunks list, or at least make it so painful to be on that no one will stay. An interesting theory, and not terribly implausible if you think cypherpunks is important enough to them to try to break. However, given that the list is instantly infiltratable with zero effort, the only escape from that that would be taking the cypherpunks list completely underground - which would fundamentally alter its character. Bear -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library SystemVirginia, MN (218) 741-3840 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
Dealing with spam. (with mechanical assistance)
On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Bryan Nolen wrote: Shall we only allow messages from subscribed members? Moderate? Shut the lists down? Just deal? Definatly close the list to ONLY subscribers... Bad plan. This is political speech here; people need to be able to speak anonymously. Moderation is also a bad plan; it creates a central point of control at which the list could be monitored, shut down, or sabotaged. "Just Deal" though, is actually pretty easy with procmail. I find that a good .procmailrc keeps the S/N ratio acceptably high. Start by tossing everything from egroups and aol, and everything that mentions "du jour" or "gagler" in the header. After that, just look for key phrases in the subject line, (such as "welcome to", "unable to process", "loans", "work at home", "business opportunity", "retire in", "retirement", etc.) and you can get the S/N back up to at least 70%. If you're an advanced procmail scripter, you can write the script to be a little more suspicious of stuff sent to the "toad.com" node than to the other nodes: I've been noticing that a good three-quarters of the spam is coming through toad. It has been frightening of late though, how much incoming traffic has been getting autofiled in my "spam" folder from cpunks; I think if all that crap were going in my "cypherpunks" folder, S/N would be under 10% at this point. However, even with my filters on it, I've been noticing that the amount of actual "content" has been dropping off. It looks like folks are unwilling to wade through the spam and keep the discussions going, which is sad. Bear
Re: Dealing with spam. (with mechanical assistance)
On Sun, Aug 06, 2000 at 09:14:02AM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Bryan Nolen wrote: Shall we only allow messages from subscribed members? Moderate? Shut the lists down? Just deal? Definatly close the list to ONLY subscribers... Bad plan. This is political speech here; people need to be able to speak anonymously. Add the known sources of anonymous mail (remailers etc) to the posters list. When a post is rejected because the sender isn't on the posters list, the list operator gets a copy. He can then, if it's an anonymous post from a new anonymous post source, post it to the list (and add the new address to the posters list). It's not hard to get majordomo to have seperate subscribrs and posters lists. No coding required. "Just Deal" though, is actually pretty easy with procmail. I find that a good .procmailrc keeps the S/N ratio acceptably high. Start by tossing everything from egroups and aol, and everything that mentions "du jour" or "gagler" in the header. After that, just look for key phrases in the subject line, (such as "welcome to", "unable to process", "loans", "work at home", "business opportunity", "retire in", "retirement", etc.) and you can get the S/N back up to at least 70%. If you're an advanced procmail scripter, you can write the script to be a little more suspicious of stuff sent to the "toad.com" node than to the other nodes: I've been noticing that a good three-quarters of the spam is coming through toad. It has been frightening of late though, how much incoming traffic has been getting autofiled in my "spam" folder from cpunks; I think if all that crap were going in my "cypherpunks" folder, S/N would be under 10% at this point. However, even with my filters on it, I've been noticing that the amount of actual "content" has been dropping off. It looks like folks are unwilling to wade through the spam and keep the discussions going, which is sad. I have the same sort of procmail filters. Few people are willing to do this though, and fewer have the knowledge to do it. The rest have to wade through the spam. -- Eric Murray http://www.lne.com/ericm ericm at lne.com PGP keyid:E03F65E5 Security consulting: secure protocols, security reviews, standards, smartcards.
