On Sun, Feb 17, 2002 at 08:02:11PM -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
On 2/17/02 7:48 PM, "Larry McVoy" lm@bitmover.com wrote:
Second, the point is that even if mailman is 100% perfect, it's not at all clear that that would result in even 1% less spam hitting home. If that's even remotely close, then it seems like efforts could be better spent on screening technology.
You can't assume your admins are going to want/have screening technology, unless you build it into mailman. And I don't think Mailman can simply say "hey, that's some other program's problem".
I'm not in charge of as much mail as you, Chuq, but I've been around the block a couple times too... and I'm not sure I agree with that.
We need to find ways to not
become an easy source for the harvester machines. I DO know from my sites that addresses published ONLY as mailman admins get harvested and hit by spam.
Yup, and so does every web page on the net, and it will keep happening until other things outside our control change markedly -- either on the network provider TOS enforcement side...
or on the find offenders and burn down their buildings side.
And I'm only partly kidding there.
To me, it's more an issue of "we can't be part of the problem", not "we're the solution". I have a couple of admins who want their addresses removed from all public pages -- which I've refused to do, because I think the need for access by a user in trouble trumps the admin's privacy.
Damn right it does. You're gonna be in the movies, you gotta expect to sign the occasional autograph at dinner.
I think at least
one of those admins has solved it by setting up an admin-specific account,
That's the proper solution.
and redirecting it to /dev/null, which, if I ever definitely catch him doing so, will get him in trouble...
But that's not, and I concur with your appraisal.
But at the same time -- I don't blame him. And Mailman has a responsibility to do something about that, the way we (as admins) have a responsibility ot our users not to make them easy fodder for the harvesters by publishing archives in an easy to harvest format...
Look up "enabler". This is an old argument. I don't know that I concur that reducing the pain threshold of people who might otherwise have an incentive to do *useful* work on spam reduction is a good idea.
Cheers, -- jra
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Florida http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274
"If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?" -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk")