Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 13:45:20 +0930 From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: "Philip J. Koenig" <pjklist@ekahuna.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, Benjamin Krueger <benjamin@macguire.net> Subject: Re: hub.freebsd.org spam policy Message-ID: <20020405134520.P93816@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020405004608582.AAA398@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com> References: <3cacebac.f8c.1804289383@subdimension.com>; <20020405004608582.AAA398@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com>
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On Thursday, 4 April 2002 at 16:46:08 -0800, Philip J. Koenig wrote: > On 4 Apr 2002, at 15:26, Benjamin Krueger boldly uttered: > >> * irado (irado@subdimension.com) [020404 15:11]: >>>> Poorly implemented and arbitrary "anti-spam" blocking is worse than >>>> none at all, and we will continue to see innocent people getting >>>> unnecessarily inconvenienced as a result. >>>> >>>> Meanwhile, if messages like the following are any indication, these >>>> "anti-spam" measures aren't even particularly effective for their >>>> primary purpose. >>>> >>>> [sent to questions@freebsd.org] >>>> >>>>> Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 06:30:34 -0600 >>>>> From: "Phongsin Ch" <Phongsin.Ch@sanmina-sci.com> >>>>> Subject: Get more money by e-commerce business . >>> >>> cool.. very cool. I am being upset by these 'anti-spam' >>> cause that I am obliged to use my webmail account to deliver >>> posts to the list, which is boring. >>> >>> BTW, will somebody realy take care on this?? >> >> If the spam filtering that the lists implement are not to your >> liking, perhaps you can volunteer to help maintain better ones? >> Filtering is not a perfect science. It isn't even close. > > Well yanno, I'd be glad to contribute, but the attitude of whoever > answers "postmaster@freebsd.org" has been consistently uninterested > in my POV on the matter so far. There are many possible reasons for that. In general, we don't have too much sympathy for people who have configuration problems and then blame us for rejecting their mail. Still, as others have said, the method we're using isn't ideal, and if you can come up with a better one, we're all ears. But you need to come up with the better one first before you'll get too much attention. > I consider myself lucky to have finally gotten the ability to send > email to the lists or to postmaster without it bouncing back. (and I > had to make changes to my email client in order to do so -- > something that has *never* been necessary with any list or recipient > I have emailed in the last 7 years or so I've been using this email > client) If this is a DNS problem, it has nothing to do with the client. But is it DNS? What message do you get with the bounce? > Correct me if I'm wrong here, but until very recently the FreeBSD > lists didn't even require subscription validation to post messages - > there was a big debate about it recently if I'm not mistaken. If > true, freebsd.org is so out of touch with modern realities of > operating public lists that I have little sympathy for their > problems with spam, whether or not they operate particularly big > lists or not. Well, that's your opinion, and certainly one that will gain you little sympathy with the postmaster. One of the goals of the public lists is to allow legitimate users to post messages easily, without being inundated by messages they don't want or having to subscribe and unsubscribe every time. If you disagree with that, that's your prerogative, but to call it "out of touch with reality" is not going to make friends. > (it's extremely ironic that the debate at the time revolved around > this utopian fantasy that people should be able to post to the list > without ever "subscribing"... yet with their current implementation > of arbitrary filtering, they are in fact intentionally blocking > various perfectly innocent users and longtime subscribers from using > the lists, people who have nothing at all to do with "spam") No, this is not a utopian fantasy, it works. I monitor how much mail rejected due to bad DNS is really spam. It's about 99%. If you're talking about other things, it would be nice to hear what they are. >> Calling the filters poor and abritrary is unfair at best, and >> ignorant at worst. The filters that the FreeBSD mailing lists use >> are common, and found in lists across the internet. > > You are just plain wrong. I am not at all unfamiliar with antispam > measures, I have debated them for years and I run mail systems for a > variety of domains. If these measures were so common, why is it that > freebsd.org (and only recently) was the only organization out of > hundreds or thousands that have been recipients of my email messages > that has ever cared about this particular detail that they used as an > excuse to not only block me from posting to the lists, but even from > emailing postmaster? Again, you're not being specific enough. We've required reverse DNS for years. > To quote from my last message to the person who answered > postmaster@freeebsd.org email (and, I might add, never responded to > these comments and others): > >> [freebsd.org person claims their filters are justified by "RFCs"] >> >> >> in particular, using them for "postmaster@domain" email is a highly >> questionable practice. Since you brought up RFC's, how about this >> quote from RFC 2821: >> >> >>> SMTP systems are expected to make every reasonable effort to accept >>> mail directed to Postmaster from any other system on the Internet. >>> In extreme cases --such as to contain a denial of service attack or >>> other breach of security-- an SMTP server may block mail directed to >>> Postmaster. However, such arrangements SHOULD be narrowly tailored >>> so as to avoid blocking messages which are not part of such attacks. > >> If you run a well maintained mail host, you shouldn't have >> problems. If you're forced to use a mail host which breaks some >> internet curtosies, is part of a banned netblock, or otherwise >> misbehaves, I'm very sorry but this is how the internet works (or >> doesn't work). > > Wrong wrong wrong wrong. It's awfully convenient when trying to > justify one's own unilateral actions, to assert that "that's just the > way the internet works", but it's not only often just a figment of > that person's imagination, it's often just damn arrogant. Well, the person, whose identity you don't reveal, has explained things to you. The best you can do to justify your viewpoint is to repeat yourself with no justification. > For example, if some over-zealous "parental filter" company decides > that the word "breast" is evil and therefore blocks it from anyone > who is using their parental filtering utility, it doesn't give them > the justification to say to those who complain about not being able > to reach sites on breast cancer that "it's just the way the internet > works". > > Some sites in the USA are blocking the network address range from > entire countries like China as an "antispam measure", because they're > too lazy (or don't consider it important) to go to the effort to use > a method that doesn't cause so much collateral damage. So when a > chinese-american customer contacts them to complain that they can no > longer communicate with their relatives back home, are they going to > get told "that's just how the internet works"? How arrogant and > obnoxious that is. And your solution? I see a lot of bitching, but no suggestions about how to improve it. I'm not surprising you're not getting your viewpoint across. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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