NoOp wrote:
On 10/04/2008 09:01 PM, Barbara Duprey wrote:
comments inline...
As are mine.
NoOp wrote:
On 10/04/2008 04:35 PM, Barbara Duprey wrote:
In a related post, I asked what people thought about just eliminating
the "goodbye" confirmation. I don't think malicious unsubscribes are
either likely or particularly harmful, and it would be much easier to
deal with malicious subscribes. The unsubscribe process could send a
message, but not require response, and that would mean that once the
subscription account was known, anybody could do the unsubscribe. So
when we got one of these "please unsubscribe me" posts, we could just do
it, or tell an apparently unsubscribed OP to look at a full message
header to identify the subscriber, then use the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] to unsubscribe. Haven't
heard any response to that idea yet.
I think that is not a good idea. Without the "goodbye" confirmation
anyone could possibly unsubscribe you, or anyone else on the list.
Understood, and it would be annoying, but not really harmful. An
unwanted subscription (or a bunch of them), however, can cause real
difficulty. Maybe the technique mentioned earlier here (defining a mimic
account to the offender's on the victim's email client, sending an
unsubscribe, and confirming it as if from the offending subscribed
account) will work, and maybe not. If not, it appears to be very
difficult to unsubscribe because the victim does not have access to the
subscribed account to confirm the unsubscribe.
Actually it would be more than annoying and create havoc across this
mail list.
Malicious subscribes can only occur if someone has control of an account
and can respond to the "you have subscribed" confirmation email. If
someone has control of the email account and is using it to subscribe it
to mailing lists it is already too late; the email account has been
already compromised, and should be discarded or the user should have the
email account password reset & monitored by the email account provider.
The situation we're dealing with here is that someone created an actual
gmail account and used it to subscribe to a number of lists, providing
any required confirmations, and then redirected all incoming traffic to
the chosen target, whose mail is now filling up and interfering with his
business. The target email account was not itself compromised, and the
problem account is still out there with the guilty party apparently
frequently changing the password. No special knowledge of the target
account was needed, just its mailto name.
The fact that Chuck has someone that is forwarding emails from this list
to his sbcglobal.net account is not the problem of the users on this
list. It's a problem with him and whoever maliciously is forwarding the
emails to him.
It is however a problem of the list manager in that it has never been
easy to communicate with a live person/moderator/manager of this list.
For instance; there is _no_ obvious address/person/email that even we,
as valid subscribers to this list, can write to to complain about a
Chuck. Yes, we can also try to view the mailing list pages for some
contact information but in the end we'll not find one - I've not, and
I've been on this list since 2007 (I think).
Luckily I use gmane for this and many, many other lists, and wonder why
anyone still would use an actual email list subscription when they can
use a gmane or other nntp newsreader subscription instead.
[snips]
1. First off he should take the issue to the provider of the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] account (Google) and file an abuse request that
all email from that account stop forwarding to his sbcglobal account.
Yes, and he's been advised of this. Don't know if he's done it, or how
responsive Google is to this kind of request.
2. He should simply log into his AT&T (sbcglobal.net) account and
blacklist [EMAIL PROTECTED] and and tag [EMAIL PROTECTED]
as spam. Note my posting address; I have an sbcglobal.net account so I
know how easy it is to block emails from any particular email address.
His initial description of the problem didn't mention the gmail account;
I'm not sure if this is a true forwarding, with the sender clearly
identified, or if the sender appears to be the list because of the way
Google handles list traffic. Maybe somebody who uses gmail can respond
with more info here. In any case, though, what about people who have to
pay by the message? Doesn't the message still get transmitted and have
to be paid for, even if it is immediately discarded? (I know that's not
the case with sbcglobal.net, but it could happen to somebody else.)
Again, it doesn't matter from this list perspective. Chuck should have
just used the tools provided to him by his ISP to block any further
emails from this list and the [EMAIL PROTECTED] account.
We are not responsible for the ignorance of someone that does not use
the tools provided by their ISP to block unwanted email. Chuck stated
"this emailer where I have been forwarded hundreds of lists" and I
initially took that to mean that he's been subscribed to hundreds of
mail lists. A Google on Chuck seems to indicate that he probably meant
that he's received hundreds of emails from this list. If that is the
case, then again, he easily could have used the tools that his ISP
provides to him to block/delete the unwanted messages.
[snip]
His sbcglobal.net account was not subscribed. All his messages went
through "moderator for [email protected]" -- attempting to
unsubscribe that just got a message that it wasn't subscribed and
therefore couldn't be unsubscribed. I do kind of wonder why the
moderator let so many through, though.
Good point. Now can you find the information to complain to the list
moderator/adminstor... If you can I'll give you a gold star :-)
snip<
Might this work?
from: http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html
Quote<
Mailing List Problems?
If you're having problems with any of the lists, please contact the list
owner rather than posting your problem to the whole list. Addresses for
list owners take the form [EMAIL PROTECTED], so for example
the discuss list owner address would be [EMAIL PROTECTED]
By far the most common mailing list problem is attempting to unsubscribe
from an address that is not subscribed. If you need to unsubscribe a
specific address, say "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", send a blank email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If none of this helps, and you still have questions, please contact us.
<end Quote<
TomW
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