Spam by subscription to list

[Michael Lustfield]

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On Sat, 6 Jun 2009 20:25:09 +0530
vid <vid at svaksha.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 12:01, Michael Lustfield<mtecknology at ubuntu.com> wrote:
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> > This seems to be a pretty hot topic. I'd like to make note of what I
> > did to stop spam on my list.
> >
> > First is of course that only members can post to the list. I did my
> > best to review where legitimate email comes from. I realized that it's
> > very very seldom among any list that non-members ever try to post to a
> > list without it being spam.
> 
> I concur. UW-list follows the same policy and it drastically reduced
> the time admins spent on rejecting spam posts.
> 
> > Second is that some spammers to join lists in order to spam. To avoid
> > this, in /privacy/sender:
> > default_member_moderation: Yes
> > member_moderation_action: Hold
> 
> We dont follow this policy as by default goodwill is assumed, even for
> new first time posters :)
> 
> >
> > To help open the constraint a little bit, I've also added this
> > in /privacy/sender:
> > accept_these_nonmembers:
> >  ^.*\@canonical\.com$
> >  ^.*\@ubuntu\.com$
> 
> How do you handle those who use gmail, yahoo or other id's.
I used to have a little more complex regex in use, however, I've seen
spam come from those domains as well. I like to assume that anyone
sending mail from a canonical or ubuntu email address will be in good
faith. However, I realize these can be spoofed too. I have more than
just these in the list but those are the two that will concern other
users. You could easily append additional domains the exact same way.

When I started off with list management, I was using the default
settings. I think they were pretty close to defaults. I added a line to
"reject_these_nonmembers" which basically amounted to , if the space
between user and .com/.edu/etc. part of the email was beyond a certain
length it was held. I don't remember the exact regex, but I did this
because most spammers tend to have a very long domain name. This wasn't
good enough which is why I switched, but that alone helped a lot.
> 


- -- 
Michael Lustfield

Kalliki Software, SD LoCo
Network and Systems Administrator
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