There has been considerable discussion, less constructive than it could have been, on [EMAIL PROTECTED] about spam getting through to the main mailing list. Posts to spam-related threads are currently outnumbering spam by an order of magnitude, so the list admins hope that this mail will be the last of them.
Before the recent spams that got through, this was what the list admins were doing to try to prevent spam getting through: - using Postfix's checks for valid sender domains and so on; - passing all posts to the mailing list through SpamAssassin, and moderating any posts that scored 3 or more; and - passing all posts to the mailing list through a number of custom header checks. In response to recent spam that got passed onto [EMAIL PROTECTED] we have: - upgraded SpamAssassin to version 2.60 which no longer gives negative scores to mails with valid In-Reply-To and References headers; - considerably customised the SpamAssassin scores based on spam that SA wasn't catching; and - added further header checks. Pete Hardy in particular has spent a lot of hours working on SLUG's spam filtering in the last week. On average, the list admins prevent somewhere between 6 and 10 spams per DAY from reaching [EMAIL PROTECTED] Postfix spam checks block around 700 spam per month, and SpamAssassin around about the same again. See http://slug.org.au/cgi-bin/mailgraph.cgi for some more stats. At the next SLUG meeting, financial members will be given the opportunity to vote on whether [EMAIL PROTECTED] should become a closed list -- that is ALL posts from people who aren't subscribed (and posts from subscribers posting from another address) would be held for moderation. If you're interested in changing list policy in response to spam, please vote at the next monthly meeting. If you are not going to attend the monthly meeting and are a financial member wishing to vote on the list policy, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a proxy vote. If you are not a financial member, you may join at the meeting, or by sending a cheque for $12.50, together with a note containing your name, email address, and postal address, to the address listed at http://www.slug.org.au/contacts.html (make sure it reaches us before the meeting). In the meantime, let's get SLUG's signal to noise ratio back to normal. Mary Gardiner, SLUG Secretary -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
