Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 15:17:28 +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: <20020405151728.H68310@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20020405052942787.AAA368@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com> References: <20020405004608582.AAA398@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com> <20020405052942787.AAA368@empty1.ekahuna.com@pc02.ekahuna.com>
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On Thursday, 4 April 2002 at 21:29:42 -0800, Philip J. Koenig wrote: > On 5 Apr 2002, at 13:45, Greg 'groggy' Lehey boldly uttered: > >> 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: >>> >>>>> 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. > > I do not have a "configuration problem". You carry on to say that you do. > If you read what I wrote, you would have seen that I have been using > variations of the same email client for around 7 years and have > NEVER had this problem before freebsd.org decided to implement this > filtering. The problem was there, it just went unnoticed. >> 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. > > With all due respect, that remains to be seen. If you'd like copies > of my correspondence with the freebsd.org postmaster as an example of > this alleged 'all ears' policy (and with their approval), I'd be glad > to provide them. No, I told you what I'd like to see: actions, not words. >> But you need to come up with the better one first before you'll get >> too much attention. > > There are a plethora of methods in use today for blocking spam. The > problem in my view are the methods which PURPORT to be "spam > blockers", but which are actually "wing and a prayer" things based on > faulty and over-generalized assumptions. Ah, yes, but that's your view. You haven't come up with a good alternative. > (it now appears that the lists require subscription confirmation, > which has been standard practice elsewhere around the net for years) Ah, you've noticed, have you? That's been in place for years. >> 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? > > I'll tell you exactly what the problem was. Thank you. > The filters at hub.freebsd.org are designed to block *anything* that > has a message- ID that ends in "localhost". EVEN TO > POSTMASTER.. which is a very rude practice. OK, and possibly agreed. I suspect that's an accident. Are you volunteering to fix it? > I have been using various versions of this email client (Pegasus > Mail) since around 1995, and as far as I know, my messages have been > formatted that way for the last seven years and I have never *once* > gotten a complaint or a bounceback due to that reason... until now. Yes, that's about the fourth time you've said that. > Now the guy who answers postmaster@freebsd.org says the reasoning > behind this is that various spammers supposedly use "@localhost" in > their Message-ID headers. But THE PROBLEM with this is that lots of > us who have *nothing to do with spam* also do this.. and have for > years. Yup. But you can reconfigure. It seems that you have done. > As far as I'm concerned, "spam filters" should do just that: FILTER > SPAM. Not stuff which just "kinda looks like spam, sorta". I > consider such practices net abuse. OK, come up with a reliable spam recognizer and the world will beat a path to your door. > There are a variety of less arbitrary methods. Nothing is perfect. > But such filters as described above are GUARANTEED to block innocent > messages. I believe this is the case of every method. You still haven't come up with any suggestions. > Perhaps it will anger someone who just doesn't like to hear opinions > of those who happen to disagree with their practices.. but the > practices I am talking about are commonly accepted these days. Bad mail configurations are commonly accepted these days. Massive text mutilation in mail message is commonly accepted these days. Microsoft is commonly accepted these days. That doesn't mean that we're going to accept any of them. > I cannot think of any other large email list that is so naive to > think that they can operate without any sort of subscriber > verification and still have a handle on spamming and abuse. Well, I obviously can't influence your thought processes. > And about this "bad DNS", I assume you are assuming something must > match forward/reverse? What are you testing DNS on, the last-hop > host? What happens if it has several A records or CNAME records? No, we just require reverse mapping. In any case, multiple A records are not an issue. > That's all I'm going to go into for now. OK, since you haven't come up with any concrete suggestions, we might as well terminate the thread. 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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