From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 1 11:09:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA04127; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 11:02:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gsp.org (rsk.itw.com [208.211.3.21]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA04120 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 11:01:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from rsk@localhost) by gsp.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA03423 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 14:19:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 14:19:49 -0400 From: Rich Kulawiec To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Anyone else seeing probes from meta-list.net? Message-ID: <19991001141949.A3409@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.1i Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk My majordomo log shows: Oct 01 05:35:51 gsp.org majordomo[29085] {67360-trace-robot@meta-list.net} lists There doesn't seem to be any useful content at www.meta-list.net (just the default install page for Apache) so I'm at somewhat of a loss as to just what's going on here. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 1 16:22:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA07807; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 16:17:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA07800 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 16:17:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA00282; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 16:34:33 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 16:34:32 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Rich Kulawiec cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Anyone else seeing probes from meta-list.net? In-Reply-To: <19991001141949.A3409@gsp.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > My majordomo log shows: > > Oct 01 05:35:51 gsp.org majordomo[29085] > {67360-trace-robot@meta-list.net} lists I see similar probes from -trace-robot@meta-list.net to listar@ on various of my machines. (I'm not sure whether to be flattered or worried that Listar is apparently common enough now to warrant being in list-scanning automation routines.) In particular, listar@nausicaa.net and listar@listar.org were probed for lists. > There doesn't seem to be any useful content at www.meta-list.net (just > the default install page for Apache) so I'm at somewhat of a loss as > to just what's going on here. Well, the domain belongs to SPEED-LINK GmbH, a German company. My wild guess - since they're only probing for what lists exist, not for list membership - is that they're planning to set up yet another service to offer a frontend subscription to mailing lists they don't actually provide... :/ From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 1 19:50:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA09609; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 19:37:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id TAA09602 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 19:37:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 16695 invoked by uid 100); 1 Oct 1999 22:54:57 -0400 Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 22:54:57 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Jeremy Blackman cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Anyone else seeing probes from meta-list.net? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk It's probing my majordomo lists as well. I keep copies of my request mail, so here's what it said. I'm not sure why the world needs yet another list spider. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 ---snip--- Received: from m11.meta-list.net (8@62.157.134.19) by mail2.iecc.com with SMTP; 1 Oct 1999 05:36:36 -0400 Received: from wallner by m11.meta-list.net with local (Exim 3.02 #1) id 11Wz78-0001ki-00 for majordomo@gurus.com; Fri, 01 Oct 1999 11:36:30 +0200 Subject: To: majordomo@gurus.com From: 59278-trace-robot@meta-list.net Message-Id: Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 11:36:30 +0200 LISTS END -- This mail addressed to the list server majordomo@gurus.com was generated automatically in order to compile publicly accessible mailing lists in an index of the project Meta-List (starting October 1999). Normally you would not see this mail as it is a robot-to-robot message. However if you do read this mail and have any questions regarding it, please address these to: info@meta-list.net The Meta-List Team. Diese Mail an den Listserver majordomo@gurus.com wurde automatisch generiert um oeffentlich zugaengliche Listen in einen Index des Projektes Meta-List (startet im Oktober 1999) aufzunehmen. Normalerweise sehen Sie diese Mail niemals da es sich um eine Robot to Robot Kommunikation handelt, aber falls doch und Sie Fragen zu dieser Mail haben, so wenden Sie sich an: info@meta-list.net Ihr Meta-List Team. From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 2 07:22:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA18275; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 07:15:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from claude.akamai.com (dmshaw.ne.mediaone.net [24.218.137.194]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA18268 for ; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 07:15:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id KAA07021 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 10:33:08 -0400 Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 10:33:08 -0400 From: David Shaw To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Anyone else seeing probes from meta-list.net? Message-ID: <19991002103308.A31373@jabberwocky.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: <19991001141949.A3409@gsp.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.5i In-Reply-To: ; from Jeremy Blackman on Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 04:34:32PM -0700 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3CB3B415/2048/4D 96 83 18 2B AF BE 45 D0 07 C4 07 51 37 B3 18 X-URL: http://www.jabberwocky.com/ X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Waning Gibbous (51% of Full) X-Pointless-Random-Number: 158 X-Time-Til-Y2K: 12 weeks, 6 days, 14 hours, 29 minutes, 18 seconds X-Time-Til-Wedding: 5 weeks, 1 days, 7 hours, 29 minutes, 18 seconds X-Silly-Header: It sure is. Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 04:34:32PM -0700, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Rich Kulawiec wrote: > > > My majordomo log shows: > > > > Oct 01 05:35:51 gsp.org majordomo[29085] > > {67360-trace-robot@meta-list.net} lists > > I see similar probes from -trace-robot@meta-list.net to > listar@ on various of my machines. (I'm not sure whether to be > flattered or worried that Listar is apparently common enough now to > warrant being in list-scanning automation routines.) In particular, > listar@nausicaa.net and listar@listar.org were probed for lists. > > > There doesn't seem to be any useful content at www.meta-list.net (just > > the default install page for Apache) so I'm at somewhat of a loss as > > to just what's going on here. > > Well, the domain belongs to SPEED-LINK GmbH, a German company. My wild > guess - since they're only probing for what lists exist, not for list > membership - is that they're planning to set up yet another service to > offer a frontend subscription to mailing lists they don't actually > provide... :/ I suspect you're right, though their web page (See http://www.speed-link.de/internetfall/) doesn't go so far as to mention subscription services - just a search engine. I got probed twice.. I'll be amusing to see if their system is smart enough to remove duplicates. David -- David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/ +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 2 16:09:16 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA23133; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 15:39:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id PAA23124 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 15:39:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from FSM-1.PICA.ARMY.MIL (fsm-1.pica.army.mil [129.139.96.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA16654 for ; Thu, 30 Sep 1999 10:14:34 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 99 13:33:20 EDT From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: WebMaster , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: ??SPAM?? Message-ID: <9909301333.aa10351@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Question; I'm getting SPAM messages sent out the a list from someone = >not >subscribed and is not a good return address. How are they doing this >and how do I put a stop to it? =20 Is your list a closed list with subscribe confirmation turned on? If not, there's not much you can do except live with the problem. Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer http://labview.pica.army.mil/ From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 2 16:25:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA23248; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 15:39:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id PAA23226 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 15:39:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from iridium.mv.net (iridium.mv.net [199.125.85.17]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA04588 for ; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 11:39:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mem@localhost) by iridium.mv.net (8.9.3/8.9.3/mem-971025) id OAA03394; Fri, 1 Oct 1999 14:56:01 -0400 (EDT) From: "Mark E. Mallett" Message-Id: <199910011856.OAA03394@iridium.mv.net> Subject: Re: Anyone else seeing probes from meta-list.net? To: rsk@gsp.org (Rich Kulawiec) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 1999 14:56:01 -0400 (EDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <19991001141949.A3409@gsp.org> from "Rich Kulawiec" at Oct 1, 99 02:19:49 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Content-Type: text Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > My majordomo log shows: > > Oct 01 05:35:51 gsp.org majordomo[29085] {67360-trace-robot@meta-list.net} lists > > There doesn't seem to be any useful content at www.meta-list.net (just > the default install page for Apache) so I'm at somewhat of a loss as > to just what's going on here. Saw the same thing here at 10:47 today. We have "lists" turned off, so they didn't get anything here anyway :-) -mm- -- Mark E. Mallett | http://www.mv.com/users/mem/ MV Communications, Inc. | http://www.mv.com/ NH Internet Access since 1991 | (603) 629-0000 / FAX: 629-0049 From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 3 13:40:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA06837; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 13:25:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from DATA.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU (DATA.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU [128.2.232.11]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA06826 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 13:25:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU by DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU (PMDF V5.1-10 #7763) id <01JGPCXU3CCGA73B5G@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU> for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 16:41:48 EDT Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 16:41:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "A. Shettle" Subject: How to enable anon postings? To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Message-id: <01JGPCXUAKR6A73B5G@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU> X-VMS-To: IN%"list-managers@greatcircle.com" X-VMS-Cc: RED_TREK MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Someone wants to be able to post to my e-mail discussion list anonymously. Lives literally depend on this person being able to keep his/her identity anonymous when posting. I know the lowest-tech answer would simply be for this person to send posts via me and then for me to strip identifying information (headers etc.) before forwarding to the list. But given how much is at risk if I were to ever make a stupid human error by hitting the wrong button or something, as you can imagine I want to eliminate human error from the process as much as possible. I know nothing can be 100 percent fool-proof, but I want something as close to it as possible. What are the various options open to us? What anon remailers are out there, how do they work, how reliable are they, etc.? I'm interested both in learning about the technical side of things and also in hearing from other list-managers who need to deal with extreme confidentiality on their lists for life-and-death reasons. This can be for any reason (e.g., lists for survivors of domestic violence or childhood abuse, etc.), but especially ones with international scope (oppressive governments, etc.) Are there any other implications I need to keep in mind that go beyond purely technical aspects of this situation? I want to make sure I don't overlook anything. Thanks in advance to everyone who is able to offer any assistance, information, or feedback. Andrea red_trek@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 3 14:41:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA07295; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:24:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from server.postmodern.com (server.postmodern.com [216.240.39.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA07288 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:24:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from mcb@localhost) by server.postmodern.com (8.8.5/mcb-980201) id OAA21577; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:42:38 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910032142.OAA21577@server.postmodern.com> From: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:42:37 +0000 In-Reply-To: <01JGPCXUAKR6A73B5G@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU> X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.5 10/14/92) To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: How to enable anon postings? Cc: "A. Shettle" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Someone wants to be able to post to my e-mail discussion list > anonymously. Lives literally depend on this person being able > to keep his/her identity anonymous when posting. I know the > lowest-tech answer would simply be for this person to send > posts via me and then for me to strip identifying information > (headers etc.) before forwarding to the list. But given how > much is at risk if I were to ever make a stupid > human error by hitting the wrong button or something, as you > can imagine I want to eliminate human error from the process > as much as possible. I know nothing can be 100 percent fool-proof, > but I want something as close to it as possible. The most reasonable solution is a Web mail account, such as iName (mail.com), usa.net, HotMail, or a dozen others. Some, perhaps most, of these, send the sender's IP address as a field in the header; depending on how the user gets Web service, that may or may not provide useful identifying information. AltaVista free mail (altavista.iname.com) provides Web mail service that does NOT send the originating IP address with the message. Of course, it is known to iname.com, but someone would have to get it from them by legal process or a break-in, and then, as above, it may not provide identifying information. The value of the client IP address is less if the user comes from a large site with a Web proxy (e.g., AOL), or uses an intermediate proxy site like anonymizer.com. This used to be a big issue for lists and list maintainers, but is pretty much moot since the era of free Web mail services. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@postmodern.com / mcb@greatcircle.com From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 3 16:09:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA07984; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 15:57:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id PAA07977 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 15:57:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 29599 invoked by uid 500); 3 Oct 1999 23:14:45 -0000 Message-ID: <19991003191444.X1263@blank.org> Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 19:14:44 -0400 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: "A. Shettle" , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: How to enable anon postings? References: <01JGPCXUAKR6A73B5G@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: <01JGPCXUAKR6A73B5G@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU>; from A. Shettle on Sun, Oct 03, 1999 at 04:41:47PM -0400 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In the immortal words of A. Shettle (RED_TREK@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU): > Someone wants to be able to post to my e-mail discussion list > anonymously. Lives literally depend on this person being able > to keep his/her identity anonymous when posting. > > What are the various options open to us? What anon remailers > are out there, how do they work, how reliable are they, etc.? The simplest, and probably most fool-proof method, is simply to have this person open an account at one of the various free web-based email services, such as mail.com, hotmail or netaddress. Most of them do zero validation of information provided when opening an account, and as long as you play by their abuse policies, the odds of anybody taking an interest in the account are minimal. For extra bonus security, use an anonymizing web service such as anonymizer.com to access the webmail account, so that if the Black Hats manage to lean on the webmail provider, there won't be anything for them to trace. Disclaimer and full disclosure: I work for one of the aforementioned free email services. :) -n ----------------------------------------------------------- "Hiroshima '45, Chernobyl '86, Windows '95" ----------------------------------------------- From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 3 16:40:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA08272; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 16:28:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from uq.net.au (fox.uq.net.au [203.101.255.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA08265 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 16:28:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gateway-gp6-366 (dyn-8-144.dialin.uq.net.au [203.100.8.144]) by uq.net.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA21458 for ; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 09:45:50 +1000 (GMT+1000) Message-Id: <199910032345.JAA21458@uq.net.au> From: "EDA Resource Centre" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 09:46:25 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Servers altering email? In-reply-to: <199910030800.BAA27968@honor.greatcircle.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12a) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've had a funny problem with my mailing list over the weekend: My list is sent out as BCCs and usually there is no problem, but I've had email going through to the list members with the body text altered with a message about a bad address: Here are some interesting headers (not mine): X-Mailer: T-Online eMail 2.3 X-Sender: 08677911436-0001@t-dialin.net And here is the offending little ditty being appended to the start of each message: This is an auto generated response Please Do Not Respond To This Message ------------------------------------------------ Your e-mail message cannot be read at this time. The following address(es) are currently invalid. semk03c@prodigy.com ------------------------------------------------ Would I be right is saying prodigy.com is doing this? I've isolated that address for now, but the list members are also getting multiple copies of the email. Any ideas? Stuart From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 3 17:25:45 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA08678; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:09:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA08671 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:09:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 20403 invoked by uid 100); 3 Oct 1999 20:26:53 -0400 Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 20:26:53 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: "Michael C. Berch" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: How to enable anon postings? In-Reply-To: <199910032142.OAA21577@server.postmodern.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > The most reasonable solution is a Web mail account, such as > iName (mail.com), usa.net, HotMail, or a dozen others. Some, > perhaps most, of these, send the sender's IP address as a field > in the header; depending on how the user gets Web service, that > may or may not provide useful identifying information. Quite right. There are free web mail servers all over the world, so to be particularly secure the anonymous correspondent should look for one in a country unlikely to cooperate with a fishing expedition from the correspondent's government. Possibilities include: asean-mail.com (Thailand) eastmail.com (Japan, admins are so incompetent they probably couldn't respond to a subpoena if they wanted to) ekilat.com (Indonesia) freemail.hu (Hungary) gigileung.org (Hong Kong) gmx.de (Germany) mailbr.com.br (Brazil) newmail.net (Israel) polbox.com (Poland) Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 3 17:40:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA08841; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:20:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA08831 for ; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:19:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id RAA28264; Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:37:27 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 17:37:27 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910040037.RAA28264@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: RED_TREK@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: <01JGPCXUAKR6A73B5G@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU> (RED_TREK@DRYCAS.CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU) Subject: Re: How to enable anon postings? Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Andrea, I encourage people to post anon to the mailing lists I run if they feel they need to. Most people use their real names and addresses but even "real" addresses these days don't have complete information. Some lists require a real email address and a full name (and company affliation if appropriate). I think this is fine if stated ahead of time. It really depends on the list. I run a list for people with immune system health problems. Most members got this way from chemical injury. This means many people are trying to talk about their health with workplace management snoops spying on them (this has happened) or they are involved in legal action against their employers or they are involved in other lawsuits or political action. I also run a spin-off list for people with these health problems who are also abuse survivors. The desire for anonimity should be obvious in that case. I used to go through a complicated proceedure of having people send me anon posts and I would strip the headers. I only did this for once in a while, not regular posts. Fortunately, it's just not an issue anymore. I'll still strip headers for the regular poster who posts with a real name who simply wants to post anon once (I make it appear that it came from the address box123@immuneweb.org (I change the number as needed)...I own that domain and set up a forward so the email address really works...this is for short-term use only and I do the same for the classified ads I run on the web). But most people don't need this. Tell your subscribers to get a free email address. Xoom.com, operamail.com, juno.com, yahoo, geocities, hotmail, rocketmail, whatever. If you have problems with any of the above, or simply prefer one or more over the others, tell your subscribers which ones to use. Tell them not to use their real name and, voila!, instant anon email. Half your subscribers probably already do this anyway. Heck, most ISP's don't show the person's real name unless the user desires that. On AOL you can have different screen names and be as anon as you wish. You may have to explain this all to your subscribers who ask about anon posting. Many people, espeically internet newbies, just don't see the obvious. I had one subscriber from a Juno account not want to join one of my lists because her real name was on the account. I suggested she get a second Juno account with a fake name. This is what she did...it never would have occurred to her had I not suggested it and she saved herself hours of agonizing over what was okay to say "publically." If you've ever had a serious problem with a subscriber (harrassment, death threats, etc) you know that even the ones that look like they are using their real names are very hard to trace. Unless the police get involved, you'll probably never know their home address, for example. Even very cooperative ISP's, like AOL, won't tell you a user's identifying info directly. So, honestly, there isn't much difference between an ordinary subscriber and an anon one. Most people can't tell the difference. Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.consultclarity.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 4 11:48:59 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA21604; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 11:36:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA21597 for ; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 11:36:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Venus.mcs.net (dattier@Venus.mcs.net [192.160.127.92]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id NAA18001 for ; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 13:54:11 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Venus.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id NAA29981 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 13:54:11 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199910041854.NAA29981@Venus.mcs.net> Subject: Re: Servers altering email? In-Reply-To: <199910032345.JAA21458@uq.net.au> from EDA Resource Centre at "Oct 4, 1999 09:46:25 am" Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 13:54:11 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk [Actually, "servers failing to alter email" is more like it.] Stuart got a bounce from Prodigy that was remailed to his list's submission address: | My list is sent out as BCCs and usually there is no problem, but I've had | email going through to the list members with the body text altered with a | message about a bad address: | | Here are some interesting headers (not mine): | | X-Mailer: T-Online eMail 2.3 | X-Sender: 08677911436-0001@t-dialin.net | | And here is the offending little ditty being appended to the | start of each message: | | This is an auto generated response | | Please Do Not Respond To This Message | | ------------------------------------------------ | Your e-mail message cannot be read at this time. The following address(es) | are currently invalid. | semk03c@prodigy.com | ------------------------------------------------ | Would I be right is saying prodigy.com is doing this? I've isolated that | address for now, but the list members are also getting multiple copies of | the email. Any ideas? Yes, you are right. I had two bounces from Prodigy yesterday: one fine, normal, came to the address I had used as the envelope sender, phrased as an NDN. The other was like yours: the envelope sender was changed to postmaster@prodigy.com (or maybe .net), one more Received: header was added for its trip back to my list's host, those same lines were inserted at the top of the body except that the "currently invalid" address was different [of course]; but all the other RFC822 headers were reused directly from the post as it had left the list, and below that insertion the text was returned flush left. It was sent back to the list's submission address as found in the To: header. Stuart noticed two additional X- headers; I did not see them on the bounce I got, so perhaps they were from the original submitter's mail client and were on the post rather than having been added by Prodigy? Since Prodigy is sending these back to the To: address, they are getting reposted to the list. If your list allows open posting or uses From: to verify that the poster is a member, this sort of thing will go right through and everyone will get another copy of the post, this time as re-sent by Prodigy's daemon with the extra text inserted, just as Stuart found. Worse yet would be the case of a digest issue, where Prodigy's daemon would spit an entire digest back out at reflector readers. This is highly unfriendly and, given the false From: and the return to To: rather than to the envelope sender, completely in violation. If you run an unmoderated list and have any Prodigy users on it, especially in reflector mode, I'd suggest putting in a loop detection filter for these. It worked for me. From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 4 15:04:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA23636; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:51:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA23629 for ; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 14:51:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 12928 invoked by uid 100); 4 Oct 1999 18:09:23 -0400 Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 18:09:23 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: "David W. Tamkin" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Servers altering email? In-Reply-To: <199910041854.NAA29981@Venus.mcs.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > This is highly unfriendly and, given the false From: and the return to To: > rather than to the envelope sender, completely in violation. If you run an > unmoderated list and have any Prodigy users on it, especially in reflector > mode, I'd suggest putting in a loop detection filter for these. It worked > for me. This is a short term problem, fortunately. Any prodigy.com address is the old Prodigy Classic videotex service which will be shut down before the end of the year due to a combination of Y2K problems and its fundamental awfulness. (I hear they still have over 100K subscribers, which must say something about people's preference for the devil they know.) Their prodigy.net service is a normal ISP and their mail system isn't broken any worse than anyone else's. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 7 11:57:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA11365; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:46:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA11354 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:46:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp1.vnet.net (smtp1.vnet.net [166.82.1.31]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA24944 for ; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 18:20:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA14068 for ; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 21:37:37 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id VAA16113 for ; Sat, 2 Oct 1999 21:37:37 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 21:37:37 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: ??SPAM?? In-Reply-To: <9909301333.aa10351@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 30 Sep 1999, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer wrote: >> Question; I'm getting SPAM messages sent out the a list from >> someone not subscribed and is not a good return address. How >> are they doing this and how do I put a stop to it? > > Is your list a closed list with subscribe confirmation turned > on? If not, there's not much you can do except live with the > problem. If his list isn't closed and setup for subscription confirmation he probably doesn't know what you are talking about. Closed List - The list only accepts posts from subscribers. This simple measure stops most casual spammers. Most spammers I've encountered don't bother to subscribe. They just pick up the list address from a directory and blast away. Without this filter, your list is very vulnerable to spam. Subscription Confirmation - The software (or list admin) sends email to the address that requested the subscription. The subscriber must reply from that address to join. Many software packages send the potential subscriber a "cookie" that must be returned to activate the subscription. The cookie is a serial number that usually expires in a few days. If the cookie isn't returned in the specified time, the subscribe request expires. Both of these security measures are pretty basic. I would not consider hosting a public list with software that did not support these very important features. If you don't know how to activate these options, read the manual for your software or ask for help on the support list for your software. - murr - From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 8 08:51:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA26235; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 08:44:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from postoffice.npac.syr.edu (postoffice.npac.syr.edu [128.230.7.230]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA26228 for ; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 08:44:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from snake.npac.syr.edu (snake.npac.syr.edu [128.230.162.60]) by postoffice.npac.syr.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA18071; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:03:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (bernhold@localhost) by snake.npac.syr.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA95225; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:03:14 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199910081603.MAA95225@snake.npac.syr.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: snake.npac.syr.edu: bernhold@localhost didn't use HELO protocol Reply-to: bernhold@npac.syr.edu To: list-managers@greatcircle.com cc: bernhold@npac.syr.edu Subject: Lists, news, and searching Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 12:03:14 -0400 From: "David E. Bernholdt" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I run some mailing lists. I am thinking about providing (a) usenet version of the lists, and (b) a fully searchable archive of the lists. Obviously tools are available to provide both of these services, but it seems like using them requires duplicate storage of the entire archive. News servers have their particular format, and all of the search software I've seen works with mailing list archives in a slightly different format. I could probably take some existing tools and hack them to agree on a format, but the time I have to spare for this is very limited. For the time being, I could probably live with the double storage (disk is cheap, after all). But I'm wondering if anyone can point me to a better solution up front. Thanks very much! -- David E. Bernholdt | Email: bernhold@npac.syr.edu Northeast Parallel Architectures Center | Phone: +1 315 443 3857 111 College Place, Syracuse University | Fax: +1 315 443 1973 Syracuse, NY 13244-4100 | URL: http://www.npac.syr.edu From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 8 12:36:46 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA28966; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:30:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA28959 for ; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:29:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA17520 ; Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:47:10 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199910081603.MAA95225@snake.npac.syr.edu> References: <199910081603.MAA95225@snake.npac.syr.edu> Date: Fri, 8 Oct 1999 12:26:54 -0700 To: bernhold@npac.syr.edu, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Lists, news, and searching Cc: bernhold@npac.syr.edu Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:03 PM -0400 10/8/99, David E. Bernholdt wrote: > I could probably take some existing tools and hack them to agree on a > format, but the time I have to spare for this is very limited. For > the time being, I could probably live with the double storage (disk is > cheap, after all). But I'm wondering if anyone can point me to a > better solution up front. www.webcrossing.com -- interfaces to mail lists, and allows for both web-based and NNTP based access. I use them for my archives. A future release will integrate listserver capabilities into the program itself, so it all coalesces into a single dataset. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 9 23:19:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA18551; Sat, 9 Oct 1999 23:14:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail4.svr.pol.co.uk (mail4.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.211]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA18544 for ; Sat, 9 Oct 1999 23:14:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-126.ruthenium.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.21.254] helo=arpad.thegreen.private ident=exim) by mail4.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 11aCXR-00054q-00; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 07:32:58 +0100 Received: from cc047 (helo=localhost) by arpad.thegreen.private with local-esmtp (Exim 3.036 #1) id 11aCXO-0005AB-00; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 07:32:54 +0100 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 07:32:47 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@arpad.thegreen.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: postmaster@ENCEPHALON.COM, abuse@CTCHOUSTON.COM cc: postmaster@Cranfield.ac.uk, listmaster@cranfield.ac.uk, List Managers Mailing list Subject: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Every majordomo based mailing list at Cranfield.ac.uk just (early Sunday, Oct 10, 1999) experienced a subscription or attempted subscription from sbergeon@ENCEPHALON.COM Until I get a satisfactory explanation for this (which I have to take as extremely suspicious) I am blocking all email from enephalon.com to Cranfield.ac.uk. The blocking does allow mail to postmaster@Cranfield.ac.uk and to abuse@cranfield.ac.uk so there is a route by which Steve Bergeon can reach the mail administrators at Cranfield. I am sending this message to the source (postmaster@encephalon.com) and to his ISP ctchouston.com. I am also posting to the list managers list first to warn others and second in the hope that someone will be able to shed some light on this. Fortunately all lists have 'who_access = closed' and I've put in appropriate blocks in global_taboo_headers. - -j - -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBOAAzFRu6nIqxqP+5AQF9QQP9FNNSM+cm38uB0USn9jtaPLw/zrVuyfPs KipHrIHRbimc2pFWj68bPNFuFnAeWID4kwuoDT0ASa6SmHQMOW8mmD7Kzq3O0DrQ mH9VEBIwFIrUFmkE5wvE5hzVoLW4DY3HiOT+5aqFV//6Bp1scjlfKzOWkZsdG2V+ 8fRJ/wxmeZ0= =SLKZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 09:20:37 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA25597; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 09:10:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA25589 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 09:10:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA08997; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 09:30:39 -0700 To: Jeffrey Goldberg cc: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 10 Oct 1999 07:32:47 +0100. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 09:30:39 -0700 Message-ID: <8995.939573039@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: >Every majordomo based mailing list at Cranfield.ac.uk just (early Sunday, >Oct 10, 1999) experienced a subscription or attempted subscription from > > sbergeon@ENCEPHALON.COM > >Until I get a satisfactory explanation for this (which I have to take as >extremely suspicious) I am blocking all email from enephalon.com to >Cranfield.ac.uk... I'm glad this came up because it allows me to pose a question. As part of an anti-spam system I'm working on, it might turn out to be very helpful to know the envelope sender addresses used by various mailing lists, i.e. many/most/all of the legitimate opt-in mailing lists in existance. It seems that the only way to gather these, en mass, would be to develop some sort of automated thingy that would go and subscribe to all of the lists it could find, wiat for the first message from each list, grab the envelope sender address, and then unsubscribe. But Jeffrey's message would seem to indicate that doing this, en mass, for lots of mailing lists, might well raise hackles in many quarters. Would it? Is this sort of activity considered un-kosher, in general, or is it just considered un-kosher if there's no good explanation for it forthcoming from the party doing it? From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 09:35:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA25712; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 09:28:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id JAA25705 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 09:28:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 8282 invoked by uid 100); 10 Oct 1999 12:47:15 -0400 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:47:13 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Jeffrey Goldberg cc: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Every majordomo based mailing list at Cranfield.ac.uk just (early Sunday, > Oct 10, 1999) experienced a subscription or attempted subscription from > > sbergeon@ENCEPHALON.COM > > Until I get a satisfactory explanation for this (which I have to take as > extremely suspicious) I am blocking all email from enephalon.com to > Cranfield.ac.uk. That's a reverse mailbomb attack. Someone doesn't like sbergeon and is trying to forge subscriptions to a gazillion lists. In all likelihood the forger isn't anywhere near that domain. I've set my mail aliases so I keep copies of mail to majordomo, to make it easier to track both deliberate and inadvertent mailbomb attacks like this one. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 10:50:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA26269; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:37:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA26262 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:37:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA34608 ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:57:38 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <8995.939573039@monkeys.com> References: <8995.939573039@monkeys.com> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:49:12 -0700 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , Jeffrey Goldberg From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Cc: List Managers Mailing list Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:30 AM -0700 10/10/99, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > Would it? Is this sort of activity considered un-kosher, in general, or > is it just considered un-kosher if there's no good explanation for it > forthcoming from the party doing it? It would be hard to tell the difference between this and someone doing prep work for a spam attack. I'd say, even if you sent email to the postmaster explaining, it'd still raise hackles, and might well not be believed by anyone who doesn't know you, explanation or no. And if this were a tool that was going to be released for general usage, I'd say it'd make list managers very, very unhappy. Imagine if, oh, procmail did this for every user. it *would* turn into an attack on list servers, from sheer volume of requests. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 11:05:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA26338; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:48:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA26331 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:48:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA11753 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 11:08:56 -0700 To: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:49:12 -0700. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 11:08:55 -0700 Message-ID: <11751.939578935@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 9:30 AM -0700 10/10/99, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > >> Would it? Is this sort of activity considered un-kosher, in general, or >> is it just considered un-kosher if there's no good explanation for it >> forthcoming from the party doing it? > >It would be hard to tell the difference between this and someone >doing prep work for a spam attack. I'd say, even if you sent email to >the postmaster explaining, it'd still raise hackles, and might well >not be believed by anyone who doesn't know you, explanation or no. > >And if this were a tool that was going to be released for general >usage, I'd say it'd make list managers very, very unhappy. Imagine >if, oh, procmail did this for every user. it *would* turn into an >attack on list servers, from sheer volume of requests. Well *that* is certainly not what I had in mind! Rather, I was just talking about _precompiling_ a list of envelope sender addresses for legitimate mailing lists, once and only once. (It would be prohibitively expensive to repeatedly do _anything_ relating to mailing lists, repeatedly, for each end user, or for any significant group thereof, or for each and ever message those end users receive.) From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 11:50:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA26891; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 11:46:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA26884 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 11:46:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 12622 invoked by uid 100); 10 Oct 1999 15:04:57 -0400 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 15:04:57 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-Reply-To: <8995.939573039@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > As part of an anti-spam system I'm working on, it might turn out to be > very helpful to know the envelope sender addresses used by various > mailing lists, i.e. many/most/all of the legitimate opt-in mailing > lists in existance. ... > > But Jeffrey's message would seem to indicate that doing this, en mass, > for lots of mailing lists, might well raise hackles in many quarters. Of course it would. It's exactly the kind of intrusive probing and scanning that's gotten you into trouble so often in the past. Lots of lists are set so that the list owner manually vets each subscription request, and list owners are unlikely to enjoy being mailbombed by your subscribe-bot. The ones that do permit automated subscription log all of the requests, and they're not going to be pleased to see a lot of mystery traffic from you either. It's not even very useful. I believe you'll find that there are only maybe 20 list management packages that are in wide use, and even with the range of MTAs that people use, you can probably come up with under a hundred patterns that would identify the lists as well as anything would. Also remember that many lists use per-recipient sender addresses to help automate bounce processing, so you'd need to do pattern matching even if you tried to collect a sender address from every single list around. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 12:35:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA27246; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:30:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA27237 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:30:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA31106 ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:50:28 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:47:25 -0700 To: John R Levine , Jeffrey Goldberg From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Cc: List Managers Mailing list Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:47 PM -0400 10/10/99, John R Levine wrote: > I've set my mail aliases so I keep copies of mail to majordomo, to make it > easier to track both deliberate and inadvertent mailbomb attacks like this > one. ditto. I try to log copies of everything, so I can backtrack if I need to. Comes in very handy. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 12:50:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA27245; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:30:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA27224 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:30:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA31112 ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:50:30 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <11751.939578935@monkeys.com> References: <11751.939578935@monkeys.com> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:49:21 -0700 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , List Managers Mailing list From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Rather, I was just talking about _precompiling_ a list of envelope sender > addresses for legitimate mailing lists, once and only once. understood. But imagine if everyone started doing something like that. And imagine how you'd react if random people started poking at your server like that. I don't think it'd be that useful, and I don't think it'd be that good an idea. I'm not entirely sure it buys you much, and it can easily be misinerpreted by people who are (as this list tends to show), suspicious (to paranoid) from the start, for good reason. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 14:35:24 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA28177; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:26:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail10.svr.pol.co.uk (mail10.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.214]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA28170 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 14:26:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-28.finasteride.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.67.28] helo=arpad.thegreen.private ident=exim) by mail10.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 11aQmO-0000pb-00; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:45:20 +0100 Received: from cc047 (helo=localhost) by arpad.thegreen.private with local-esmtp (Exim 3.036 #1) id 11aQmL-0005L8-00; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:45:17 +0100 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 22:45:17 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@arpad.thegreen.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: John R Levine cc: List Managers Mailing list Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, John R Levine wrote: > That's a reverse mailbomb attack. Someone doesn't like sbergeon and is > trying to forge subscriptions to a gazillion lists. In all likelihood > the forger isn't anywhere near that domain. I've checked the MTA logs. They do come from the named domain. > I've set my mail aliases so I keep copies of mail to majordomo, to make it > easier to track both deliberate and inadvertent mailbomb attacks like this > one. Very good idea! I suspect a "which" or "who" attack. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 10 17:05:23 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA29374; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:53:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.org (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA29367 for ; Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:52:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.90.49) by vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Sun, 10 Oct 1999 20:10:43 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 20:10:25 -0400 To: Jeffrey Goldberg From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 22:45 +0100 10/10/1999, Jeffrey Goldberg said: >On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, John R Levine wrote: > > > That's a reverse mailbomb attack. Someone doesn't like sbergeon and is > > trying to forge subscriptions to a gazillion lists. In all likelihood > > the forger isn't anywhere near that domain. > >I've checked the MTA logs. They do come from the named domain. But that's not necessarily *Steve Bergeon's* domain, which is (I believe) the point that John was making. It really does smell of a reverse-mailbomb attack. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince-lists@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 05:04:53 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id EAA07726; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 04:51:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk (euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk [138.250.48.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA07719 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 04:51:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk ([138.250.24.137] ident=cc047) by euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11aeHr-0000tm-00; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:10:43 +0100 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:27:42 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Vince Sabio cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Vince Sabio wrote: > ** Sometime around 22:45 +0100 10/10/1999, Jeffrey Goldberg said: > > >On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, John R Levine wrote: > > > > > That's a reverse mailbomb attack. Someone doesn't like sbergeon and is > > > trying to forge subscriptions to a gazillion lists. In all likelihood > > > the forger isn't anywhere near that domain. > > > >I've checked the MTA logs. They do come from the named domain. > > But that's not necessarily *Steve Bergeon's* domain, which is (I believe) > the point that John was making. It really does smell of a reverse-mailbomb > attack. The incoming mail to majordomo is from encephalon.com according to the MTA logs, as is the from address (address to be subscribed). The domain itself is owned by Stever Bergeon (Internic whois). The mail may be many things, but it is not a forgery. I should have made it clear that that was one of the first things I checked out. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 09:02:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA09924; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:28:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk (euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk [138.250.48.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA09917 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 08:28:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk ([138.250.24.137] ident=cc047) by euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 11ahfS-0004xe-00; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:47:18 +0100 Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:04:13 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: list-managers@greatcircle.com cc: Steve Bergeon , postmaster@Cranfield.ac.uk Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Steve Bergeon has answered a number of questions that I posed to him, and I believe his answers. I have removed the block on his site. I think that it is clear that I had to initially take his action as an attack until some reasonable alternative were offerred. Going for him was the fact that there was never any evidence of an attempt to conceal the source. The incoming mail for example did originate from his properly configured site. Members of this list might be very interested in his stated reason for his action in light of the recent discussion of exactly this question. Mass subscribing to lists in an attempt to work out what the envelope froms look like for bigger and better anti-spam systems will cause panic among list managers around the world. Also note that many individual list management tasks are done "manually" by the list managers including the approval of subscription requests. Trying to gather list information on a mass basis, no matter how good the cause, this way in general would cause a tremendous amount of work for listmanagers. I have half a dozen list managers at Cranfield asking me "who is sbergeon, and why is he trying to subscribe to ..." So, if people need to gather information about how different lists provide envelope-froms, this is not the way. Remember, list subscription, especially for restricted lists, is an entirely automated processes. It is true that a number of lists that should be no-advertise for outside Cranfield are infact advertised. I have been cleaning up those. As far as I am concerned this is no longer a case of potential abuse. I know that it seems that I may have over reacted, but two years ago I was hit by something similar which very much was malicious. Steve Bergeon response to a message I sent him is below. - -j - -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Assistant Postmaster Cranfield Computer Centre J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 19:21:13 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon To: postmaster@Cranfield.ac.uk Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com > > On Sun, 10 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > Sorry for all the ruckus, I was just looking for some lists > > to sign up for. As list manager, of course it's in your purview > > to disallow access to me. I just got a little carried away, no > > nefarious intent. > > Can you please reply (to postmaster) with some more detail. > > (1) Was your subscription scripted or did you manually construct > and send the necessary subscription messages? Scripts were used to generate both the initial subscription message and the reply's with authorization. > > (2) Some of the lists that you attempted to subscribe to were not > publically advertised/listed. Please describe in detail how you got > the names of the lists to subscribe to? They were all publicly available. What was used as input to the scripts was the output of a 'lists' command to your majordomo. Had I actually read the list it would have been apparent that many lists were closed. Again I apologize for that oversight. > > (3) Was Cranfield the only site you did this at or were there others? > If so, list the others so that I can consult with their mail > managers. If not, how or why did you pick Cranfield.ac.uk? > I also have the feeling that your name and address is familiar; > have we possibly crossed paths before. There was one other, I have apologized to them as well. They have chosen to not allow me on restricted lists but have no problem with the rest. Obviously my mistake was to (yes stupid, and again I apologize) assume that publicly available lists were for public consumption. Cranfield was chosen because it showed up on a search result for 'lists' on either yahoo or excite (I don't remember). If we have crossed paths, I don't recall. I try not to kick over hornet's nests as a general rule. > > (4) Please explain why when just looking for some lists to subscribe to > you didn't use the "info" command, but actually subscribed? Your > search for lists to subscribe to seems indescrimenent. You > subscribed to lists about usage of particular software at Cranfield > to lists for students in particular course to lists of participants > from an on-line conference from a year ago. Well yes, it was indiscriminate. As I said I just fed the output of the lists command into a script. My mistake, I apologize. > > I am certainly willing to accept a story involving silly mistakes > and misunderstandings, but you've got to actually provide me with > a plausible story, instead of of saying "oops". If you suspect that I am hostile, clearly you will never accept any explanation that I could give as it could easily be a fabrication. > > Until I get credible answers to those questions, I will consider your > activity hostile, and continue the blocking. As anybody would concede, that is your prerogative. > > Another question > > (5) May I have your permission to quote your message (and our > exchange on a mailing list managers mailing list where the > specific incident is being discussed. Note that it is in your > interest, if innocent, for that to happen, since others are > discussion blocking your site as well. > Once it is written in an email, there is no reason that you would not do as you wish with the text. If you feel that some balance can be achieved by some sort of public camgaign against me, nothing I would do or say could stop you. I can only keep apologizing... > > My apologies again for any inconvenience. > > What you have done looks like the prelude to either spamming the lists or > attempting to harvest list member addresses. It is very hard to imagine a > benign, even if accidental, purpose. If my imagination is unduely > limited, then you have to help me out. Your website suggests that you > are quiet experienced with the Internet, making the likelihood of this > being a mistake less (but thanks for posting that rc5stats fetch script, > I've been meaning to write my own for ages!). There were several goals for this obviously ill considered venture. Mostly I wanted to amass mail for analysis of both headers and content. To see what sort, if any, new spam would come with the new lists. To see what limits procmail had. There are much easier ways to get email addresses. By the million. At best using this method I could have gotten in the range of a few hundred. My mistakes were to be indiscriminate, and to assume that publicly available lists were in fact available to the public. It was a stupid Saturday night blunder. Take me off the lists and accept my apologies. If you really want to take on some kind of crusade against me, well have fun. > > -j > > -- > Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 > Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 > J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ > Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5.1 iQCVAwUBOAIYlBu6nIqxqP+5AQElEwP+MRrF9hLYKH+qTeMq4pijo814FhTyx2an 14q5hkFqFlGM2/urbNQAxV6cq67PsWwjhNGOO2/GumxLqeWI9+Y/z/X339CV36B9 ZdkzUsq2Y5ea4zTzf8PVQkzIckF+RVoVYPz9kOZ+tWTQGIiZtFH0zodX7LKKvtlN iXeFj8qx3hU= =pwSO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 11:10:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA11121; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:34:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA11114 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:34:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA16634 ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:52:09 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:53:16 -0700 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Sympa? mailman? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Has anyone out there used mailman (http://www.list.org) or Sympa (http://listes.cru.fr/sympa)? if so, what do you think of the system? Sympa really intrigues me, since I have a need for multi-lingual systems and I'd love to have built-in MySQL support and full mime capability... And list manager claims to have a good direct-SMTP delivery system that looks intriguing... any thoughts on either? chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 11:25:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA11384; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:55:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA11374 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 10:55:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA17669 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:16:13 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:04:13 +0100. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 11:16:13 -0700 Message-ID: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: >Steve Bergeon has answered a number of questions that I posed to him, and >I believe his answers. I have removed the block on his site. When it came right down to it, this fellow was somewhat less than entirely specific regarding the nature and intent of his research: >>There were several goals for this obviously ill considered venture. Mostly >>I wanted to amass mail for analysis of both headers and content. To see >>what sort, if any, new spam would come with the new lists. To see what >>limits procmail had. That's not to say that his intent was anything other than honorable. I just think that it is incumbant upon anyone doing research like this to be quite clear and specific regarding the methods and goals. P.S. As long as we are still talking about it (and given that this episode makes it quite apparent that list admins may get their hackles raised by any sort of automated subscribes/unsubscribes) allow me to pose the question to the entire readership of this list: If someone sent you an E-mail (in your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, would you send that info back, or would you balk? From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 13:51:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA13442; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:44:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (nz40.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.197.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA13435 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 13:44:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pC19F10B1.dip.t-dialin.net (uncu@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.197.183]) by mailgate.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de with smtp (Exim 3.02 #2) id 11ambC-0005Yt-00; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:03:15 +0200 From: Marc.Haber-lists@gmx.de (Marc Haber) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:04:02 GMT Organization: posting from University of Karlsruhe, Germany References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 10 Oct 1999 12:47:13 -0400 (EDT), you wrote: >I've set my mail aliases so I keep copies of mail to majordomo, to make = it >easier to track both deliberate and inadvertent mailbomb attacks like = this >one.=20 Is there any mailing list manager that will work with a stock MTA (that rules out listproc as I believe listproc only runs with qmail) that can be configured to include full headers of the subscription request with the confirmation request e-mail? Greetings Marc --=20 -------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! = ----- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im = Header Karlsruhe, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | Fon: *49 721 966 32= 15 Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31= 29 From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 14:21:54 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA13795; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:14:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA13786 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:14:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA22265; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:33:28 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:33:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > Has anyone out there used mailman (http://www.list.org) or Sympa > (http://listes.cru.fr/sympa)? > > if so, what do you think of the system? Ok, I'm (obviously) biased, being the author of yet a third package (Listar, at http://www.listar.org/), but here's my take. Sympa has struck me as a fairly nice system overall; many of the features they have are ones planned in the future for Listar (and ironically, a number of the features they have planned in the future are ones Listar has). Their database support is nice, and I like their ability to combine multiple lists into one overall list (like Listar's 'cc-lists' functionality, although I didn't know Sympa had such a feature until today when I went to check their changelog before responding to this post). My only true complaint about it is that it is... well, a giant Perl script. Admittedly, a far better written and organized Perl script than Majordomo (in my opinion), but still... a Perl script. For large-volume lists, I tend to prefer something written in C or C++. Now, perhaps I'm biased due to some bad experiences with Mailman, but I've never particularly liked the package. For starters, I'm the sort of person who believes that while list administration and access should be POSSIBLE over the web, it should not be REQUIRED... so the fact that mailman had -no- provision for accepting commands over e-mail the last time I looked at it strongly bothered me. Additionally, it's a Python script - yet another interpreted language. As I said, it's just one of my personal quirks that I don't like running large-volume mailing lists as interpreted scripts. I watched someone run a Majordomo list with 1900 users that got 80 posts a day, and it flattened his machine... that was one of the reasons I decided to write Listar in C. :) So, my PERSONAL opinion, between the two, is that I like Sympa better - largely because it's closer to my own philosophy of how a mailing list package should work, albeit with the one (to my mind) flaw of being written in Perl. Just my $0.02 + state sales tax (where applicable). From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 15:02:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA13975; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:34:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA13968 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:34:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA33106 ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:51:50 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 14:45:48 -0700 To: Jeremy Blackman , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk thanks for the info. Will have to look at listar, too. > As I said, it's just one of my personal quirks that I don't like running > large-volume mailing lists as interpreted scripts. I watched someone run > a Majordomo list with 1900 users that got 80 posts a day, and it flattened > his machine... that was one of the reasons I decided to write Listar in C. My experience, FWIW, is that the interpreted aspects of the server rarely are the problem. Majordomo doesn't scale well to large lists, but mostly because it's spending its time whacking at flat text files (and I don't care how fast your language or server is, you can only grep through a text file so fast...). heck, I used to run a busier site tham the 1900/80 on a 68K box years ago. The big performance areas are the update I/O and delivery overhead. Both swamp whatever overhead the server language might cause... In my personal opinion, of course. No reason NOt to use C or C++, but I've got a modified version of majordomo running pretty well with well over a million subscribers. And it'll get even better once I fully get MySQL implemented on the back end (right now, we're only driving unsubscribes from the database, and feeding commands into majordomo. Soon, we'll simply be removing majordomo and driving it all with custom code) > So, my PERSONAL opinion, between the two, is that I like Sympa better - > largely because it's closer to my own philosophy of how a mailing list > package should work, albeit with the one (to my mind) flaw of being > written in Perl. thanks. My 30 minute quick-lookover leans in the same direction, but I'd really love to run into folks who've used the servers and see how they run in the real world, before I choose one to start kicking the tires with... And, FWIW, the python/perl thing bothers me, too. Gee, just what I want to do -- learn yet another programming language.... (grin) -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 15:23:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14455; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:10:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA14446 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:10:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA19275 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:29:24 -0500 Message-ID: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:32:42 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Idiot of the hour Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello folks, it would appear that I've used up a goodly portion of my 15 minutes of fame. Unlike Mr Guilmette, I dashed off an ill conceived experiment without conferring with the community at large. As a result hackles were raised, feathers ruffled, etc. What was learned with regard to general attitudes was minimal, since the experiment was limited to only a couple of sites. The Cranfield site had 59 lists, and you all know the bad will generated from that. Since Mr Goldberg released his lock my site has received some dozen or so mails. Cranfield is a University site. The other site had a bit over 800 lists. Many of those lists were closed, but the remainder are currently generating 20-40 mails an hour. The admin of the site sent me a note asking what kind of butt-head would do such a thing, but accepted my proffered apologies without any further ado. This site was not academia, but general interest related. Can any conclusions be drawn from this small sample? Let me hazard a couple for debate: 1) The response from the site used in this way is not proportional to the number of lists. If somebody signed up for all of the four lists at my site, I'd probably notice. 2) The number of lists subscribed to (over one) is not a primary issue either. At a guess, three subscriptions in a short period of time would probably be enough to trigger alarms. 3) The admin's conclusions and assumptions based on their experience will vary wildly. 4) The goals of the lists appear to be the primary predictive factor when guessing how much will hit the fan. The lists made for truly general public consumption very much want 'masses of asses'. Other lists may be designed for a more specific audience, like alumni or current students. So, some public lists really aren't. From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 15:37:53 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14398; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:06:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA14391 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:06:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA22388; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:25:57 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:25:56 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > My experience, FWIW, is that the interpreted aspects of the server > rarely are the problem. Majordomo doesn't scale well to large lists, > but mostly because it's spending its time whacking at flat text files > (and I don't care how fast your language or server is, you can only > grep through a text file so fast...). heck, I used to run a busier > site tham the 1900/80 on a 68K box years ago. I won't deny that in the least - one reason an abstract database support layer (MySDL, Postgres, etc.) is a high priority for Listar. However, one of the problems with Majordomo is also that, for a high-traffic list, it's re-parsing the whole program (which is NOT a trivially-sized Perl script) for each post. Ouchie! > The big performance areas are the update I/O and delivery overhead. > Both swamp whatever overhead the server language might cause... In my > personal opinion, of course. No reason NOt to use C or C++, but I've > got a modified version of majordomo running pretty well with well > over a million subscribers. And it'll get even better once I fully > get MySQL implemented on the back end (right now, we're only driving > unsubscribes from the database, and feeding commands into majordomo. > Soon, we'll simply be removing majordomo and driving it all with > custom code) Often times, this may be the way to do it. I've found it may be easier to write a custom app than make an existing one do things the way that works best for you. That's why I wrote Listar; I didn't want to hack Majordomo anymore, and Smartlist... well, let's just say that giant Procmail scripts as applications scare me more than giant Perl scripts do. ;) (Actually, as far as I'm concerned, all 'general' apps should be easily customizable and extendable - hence Listar's plugin architecture. But that's neither here nor there.) > > So, my PERSONAL opinion, between the two, is that I like Sympa better - > > largely because it's closer to my own philosophy of how a mailing list > > package should work, albeit with the one (to my mind) flaw of being > > written in Perl. > > thanks. My 30 minute quick-lookover leans in the same direction, but > I'd really love to run into folks who've used the servers and see how > they run in the real world, before I choose one to start kicking the > tires with... I've been a subscriber on lists using both; I tend to prefer Sympa over Mailman because I hate going to a website to tinker with subscription options. I've admin'd neither, though - my admin experience is only with LISTSERV, Majordomo, Smartlist (Bleah), and (of course) Listar. > And, FWIW, the python/perl thing bothers me, too. Gee, just what I > want to do -- learn yet another programming language.... (grin) *laugh* From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 16:07:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14861; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:50:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA14851 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:49:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA34220 ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:10:06 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:09:01 -0700 To: Jeremy Blackman , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:25 PM -0700 10/11/99, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > However, one > of the problems with Majordomo is also that, for a high-traffic list, it's > re-parsing the whole program (which is NOT a trivially-sized Perl script) > for each post. Ouchie! But compared to the time spent queueing and delivering, it's still statistically insignificant. Bulk_mailer or whatever you use as your SMTP backend blows the recompilation out fo the water as far as overhead, and sendmail blows that out. you can do huge performance improvements simply by teaching the backend to directly write sendmail Queue files, and that'll buy you more than anything you could do to majordomo itself, other than the flat file problem. In fact, 95% of my problems are directly related to disk I/O issues -- disk I/O delays reading/writing subscriber files on the one side, and disk I/O in the sendmail queue(s) on the other side. Running 450 sendmails at once in a mail queue with a 5,000 or so batches in it -- you spend a lot of time locked up waiting for the directory inodes to free up. I've dealt with the latter, for right now, by simply using a ram disk. And the former by replacing the flat files with MySQL. perl being an interpretive language impacts the system less than running "top" does... (grin) > Often times, this may be the way to do it. I've found it may be easier to > write a custom app than make an existing one do things the way that works > best for you. Depends on what you're doing. For my Big Honking Listserver, it definitely does. For the smaller, more standard server, I want something off the shelf, and since I need to either upgrade to majordomo II or replace majordomo with something else, I've decided it's time to go back to square one and evaluate everything. I like the potential of majordomo II, but it just seems like they're trying to do things that sympa had months ago. Sympa seems more solid, further along the development path, and more solid/proven -- mj2 is still really being shaken out. (and yes, I'm part of the problem with mj2 -- watching instead of helping -- but a person only stretches so far...) > (Actually, as far as I'm concerned, all 'general' apps should be easily > customizable and extendable - hence Listar's plugin architecture. But > that's neither here nor there.) don't disagree a bit. A good, solid API is a good thing... > I've been a subscriber on lists using both; I tend to prefer Sympa over > Mailman because I hate going to a website to tinker with subscription > options. On the other hand, for the more naive and less-savvy internet users that my lists tend to attract, it's a godsend. I can't tell you how much mail I get from people who are scared to death by majordomo. it's nice to be able to do those things by e-mail, but the web is so endemic, I don't worry about that a bit any more. If I can only have one interface, I'll take web in a nanosecond. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 16:37:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA15364; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:30:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA15357 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:30:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA22696 ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:50:50 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:49:43 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:32 PM -0500 10/11/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > Can any conclusions be drawn from this small sample? How about "you probably don't want to run experiments that use someone else's computer without getting their okay first, or at least warn them what's going to happen" Frankly, Steve, that's the ONLY thing I think you did wrong, whether or not the experiment was ill-conceived or not. And frankly, I think THAT's a fairly minor oopsie, but one that would almost never happen outside of the virtual worlds. it's more an indication that we haven't yet figured out how to handle the social dynamics of the network, because I don't think anyone would ever consider something like "well, I'm going to call every phone number in the 364- prefix and see how many people answer at 2AM and what their responses are", but it happens all of the time in the virtual world. And in both cases, you don't really have to ask permission first -- those are all "public/open" interfaces. But as you've found out, it's usually a lot less hassle to at least let people know, so they don't make basic assumptions about what you're doing that might or might not be correct. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 17:22:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15791; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:11:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp2.vnet.net (smtp2.vnet.net [166.82.1.32]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA15782 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:11:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp2.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA26943; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:30:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA16464; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:30:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:30:13 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Jeffrey Goldberg cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > It is true that a number of lists that should be no-advertise > for outside Cranfield are infact advertised. I have been > cleaning up those. It is definitely worth your time to conceal any private lists. I screwed up the setup of one administrative list when I transfered to new software. Got several bogus $ubscribe requests every week until I corrected my error. - murr - From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 17:37:56 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA15851; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:17:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp1.vnet.net (smtp1.vnet.net [166.82.1.31]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA15844 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:17:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from katie.vnet.net (katie.vnet.net [166.82.1.7]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA17540; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:36:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (murr@localhost) by katie.vnet.net (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA16787; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:36:18 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:36:18 -0400 (EDT) From: murr rhame To: Marc Haber cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Marc Haber wrote: > Is there any mailing list manager that will work with a stock > MTA (that rules out listproc as I believe listproc only runs > with qmail) that can be configured to include full headers of > the subscription request with the confirmation request > e-mail? The freeware version of Listproc will work with Sendmail and presumably any other standard MTA. It doesn't send full headers with subscribe requests but it does keep a full-header log of all command transactions. I'm not familiar with the features of the commercial version of Listproc. - murr - From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 19:54:16 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA17328; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:34:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA17321 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:34:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id WAA16613; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:53:44 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991011215753.03622220@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:57:53 -0400 To: Jeremy Blackman From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 02:33 PM 10/11/99 -0700, Jeremy Blackman wrote: >As I said, it's just one of my personal quirks that I don't like running >large-volume mailing lists as interpreted scripts. I watched someone run >a Majordomo list with 1900 users that got 80 posts a day, and it flattened >his machine... that was one of the reasons I decided to write Listar in C. >:) Let's think about this for a second. How does Majordomo work? The delivery path is....The MTA gets the message and processes it through a perl script, resend. The perl script processes in, (let's be real generous, here) at most five-six seconds of CPU (that is being pretty generous for resend) and then hands it back to the MTA at a different alias. At that point, the Perl script is *completely out of the process*. The MTA then expands the 1900 user list and does all of the delivery. [root@glock /root]# time /usr/lib/majordomo/wrapper resend -l turkey turkey-outgoing< /tmp/turkey-test 2.77user 0.08system 0:03.49elapsed 81%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs (496major+384minor)pagefaults 0swaps [root@glock /root]# I actually tried this several times - resend, on my pitiful P-100 that I do all of the majordomo stuff from pretty consistently runs in about the above times. Under three seconds, on a small test list. Would the time taken by resend be much larger on a list with 1600 users? The only thing that would be extended would be the time taken to insure that the user was a member of the list. Frankly, that is just not that much of Majordomo's admittedly bloated processing, but the loop is bad and complex. My measurement shows that the the total processing time (for a name that is not found in the first list, worst case) is entended to about 6 seconds on a 1600 member list. Generally, the poster would be found early and this would not take six seconds, let's just play the game with worst case numbers. So, let's extend this: If majordomo took 90*6 seconds of CPU to process those messages, that was 9 minutes out of 1440 minutes of the say. Assuming that the day was prime shift only, 8 hours, that was 1.9% of the time. Flattened? Yes, probably, but not by Majordomo. Let me guess, they were running sendmail, right? That was where, oh, probably 98.1% of the overhead was, and the entended times to deliver each message insured that this poor user had lots of copies of sendmail running, each working through an individual message. In other words, the fact that the list manager was written in an interpreted language had pretty much nothing to do with the flattening. If you decided not to write listar in an interpreted language to save processing overhead, you can save no more than the interpreted pieces use, which would seem to be about 2% of total prime shift time for your example case. Listar happens to fix the real bloat problem, Sendmail, by doing its own delivery. Using Postfix with Majordomo fixes that as well, by using a better delivery methodology. Frankly, I'd rather only have one delivery agent on my machine. But my point is that the machine was flattened by C code, not by Perl scripts. You can write bad code in many languages. You can write good code in many languages. And, of course, the excessive use of objects makes code written in any language bloated and bad. :-) In this case, the use of interpreted languages had nothing to do with the "flattening" of the machine. Last time I took a look at delivery statistics, Postfix had delivered 110,000 messages in a week, from that same P-100. And rc5des still gets more than 90% of the CPU. -- We will fight for bovine freedom, And hold our large heads high. We will run free, with the buffalo or die! Cows with Guns. - Dana Lyons, Cows With Guns Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 22:56:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA22166; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:38:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA22158 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id WAA23470; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:57:28 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:57:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Nick Simicich cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19991011215753.03622220@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Nick Simicich wrote: > At 02:33 PM 10/11/99 -0700, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > >As I said, it's just one of my personal quirks that I don't like running > >large-volume mailing lists as interpreted scripts. I watched someone run > >a Majordomo list with 1900 users that got 80 posts a day, and it flattened > >his machine... that was one of the reasons I decided to write Listar in C. > >:) > > Let's think about this for a second. How does Majordomo work? The > delivery path is....The MTA gets the message and processes it through a > perl script, resend. The perl script processes in, (let's be real > generous, here) at most five-six seconds of CPU (that is being pretty In his case, what was largely the problem was that his Perl was misconfigured and was trying to parse through a GREAT many more Perl libraries than was needed. Each invokation of resend took about 5 _minutes_. Believe me, I helped track down and fix the misconfiguration...it IS possible to do that. It is much HARDER to do something like that (misconfigure in such a way) under C. You are, however, correct that sendmail did not aid the situation. I will also admit I am biased against writing applications in scripting languages as a general rule, because I've seen some things done very, very wrong in them. I've seen some things done wrong in C as well, and I've seen some things done right in scripting languages, but as a general rule for some reason I feel more like daemons and such should be written in C or C++ or SOMETHING that compiles and produces a binary. When I see things on freshmeat like 'HTTP Daemon written in Perl' or 'MTA written in Perl' or 'FTP client written in shell scripting language', I just want to run screaming and hide under my desk. :) > Cows With Guns Good song. :) From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 23:20:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA22502; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:09:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail10.svr.pol.co.uk (mail10.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.214]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA22495 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:09:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-107.ibogaine.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.72.235] helo=arpad.thegreen.private ident=exim) by mail10.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 11avNT-0001hp-00; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:25:40 +0100 Received: from cc047 (helo=localhost) by arpad.thegreen.private with local-esmtp (Exim 3.036 #1) id 11avNR-0005nd-00; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:25:37 +0100 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:25:37 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@arpad.thegreen.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) In-Reply-To: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > When it came right down to it, this fellow was somewhat less than entirely > specific regarding the nature and intent of his research: Yes, but the lack of any forger and the fully proper configuration of his site and domain helped. > P.S. As long as we are still talking about it (and given that this episode > makes it quite apparent that list admins may get their hackles raised by > any sort of automated subscribes/unsubscribes) allow me to pose the question > to the entire readership of this list: If someone sent you an E-mail (in > your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the > envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, > would you send that info back, or would you balk? It really depends on who it came from. It is possible that spammers might like to use big list envelope froms as their forged envelope from, Now, how do we determine who it came from and whether they are up to no good? Generally if their reply-address is on a website that is linked to by sites that I trust (say some known anti-spam sites), then I'll trust it and happily provide the information. One thing is that the query for some sites probably shouldn't go to the list owners but to the MLM owner. For example, instead of mailling 80 list owners at Cranfield, some of whom would simply not understand the question, it would be better to mail to majordomo-owner@cranfield.ac.uk. The trick is finding that address. Oh, all majorodmo based lists at Cranfield have envelope froms of owner-LISTNAME@Cranfield.ac.uk (the majordomo (and traditional) default) But over the next few months, I'll be introducing VERP and a special virtual domain maillists.cranfield.ac.uk. So all this will change. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 11 23:35:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA22471; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:07:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA22464 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 23:07:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id CAA22993; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 02:26:03 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991012022557.033a4b10@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 02:25:57 -0400 To: Jeremy Blackman From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.5.32.19991011215753.03622220@127.0.0.1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:57 PM 10/11/99 -0700, Jeremy Blackman wrote: >In his case, what was largely the problem was that his Perl was >misconfigured and was trying to parse through a GREAT many more Perl >libraries than was needed. Each invokation of resend took about 5 >_minutes_. Believe me, I helped track down and fix the >misconfiguration...it IS possible to do that. It is much HARDER to do >something like that (misconfigure in such a way) under C. No, in C, you will write something casual and a cracker will figure out how to cause a buffer overflow and wrest control of your system away from you over a distance :-). Being a security geek, I far prefer it when clients write programs in intermediate level scripting languages such as perl. Sorry, but the average C or C++ programmer can't handle the concept of safely flattening an object into a structure, or even reading a string from an external source. Any language with self sizing strings is a tremendous improvement, security wise. However, there are pathological cases of this sort all of the time. Five minutes to invoke a Perl script? I'd call that pathological and probably not worth considering as part of an evaluation. I'd also not blame the scripting language for a configuration that bad. >You are, however, correct that sendmail did not aid the situation. > >I will also admit I am biased against writing applications in scripting >languages as a general rule, because I've seen some things done very, very >wrong in them. I've seen some things done wrong in C as well, and I've >seen some things done right in scripting languages, but as a general rule >for some reason I feel more like daemons and such should be written in C >or C++ or SOMETHING that compiles and produces a binary. >From a security standpoint, I think you've been proven wrong over and over again. >When I see things on freshmeat like 'HTTP Daemon written in Perl' or 'MTA >written in Perl' or 'FTP client written in shell scripting language', I >just want to run screaming and hide under my desk. :) Sometimes things are done as interesting exercises, like the (very old) attempt to prove that vi was as "powerful" as emacs by writing a turing machine in vi. But sometimes things are reasonable to do. I still assert that the scriptable portion of MLM's structured like majordomo is not only both reasonable, but more likely to be extensible and secure than the equivalent C Code. The general rule of thumb I've used before is that if it was possible to easily enumerate the number of times something was going to happen through circumstance, it was reasonable to write a script to do it. If it was hard to enumerate but still driven by circumstance, it was probably OK to write in an object oriented language. If it was damn near impossible to enumerate because it happened so often or extremely easy to enumerate because it happened on a continuous basis, it probably had to be in C or assembler, with no objects. >> Cows With Guns > >Good song. :) It is a song? I can hear the gunfire from my windows now.. -- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 00:50:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA23556; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:39:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newmail.spectraweb.ch (newmail.spectraweb.ch [194.158.230.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA23531 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:39:32 -0700 (PDT) From: nb@thinkcoach.com Received: from quill.thinkcoach.com (194.230.192.111) by newmail.spectraweb.ch; 12 Oct 1999 09:55:12 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill.thinkcoach.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id HAA06984; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:03:14 +0200 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:03:14 +0200 Message-Id: <199910120503.HAA06984@quill.thinkcoach.com> X-Authentication-Warning: quill.thinkcoach.com: norbert set sender to Norbert Bollow using -f Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> (rfg@monkeys.com) Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) References: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ronald F. Guilmette writes: > to the entire readership of this list: If someone sent you an E-mail (in > your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the > envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, > would you send that info back, or would you balk? If the request comes from someone whose name is familiar to me, and whom I know to have strong anti-spam attitudes, and if it comes at a moment when I have some spare time, then I would honor the request. Under any other circumstances I would delete the request without even reading it to the end, for the simple reason that the only way to reach my goals is to avoid working for the goals of everyone else all the time. May blessings from the eternal God surprise and overtake you! Norbert. -- Norbert Bollow, Coach http://thinkcoach.com Backup email: nb@pobox.com From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 01:20:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA23557; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:39:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newmail.spectraweb.ch (newmail.spectraweb.ch [194.158.230.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA23534 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:39:34 -0700 (PDT) From: nb@thinkcoach.com Received: from quill.thinkcoach.com (194.230.192.111) by newmail.spectraweb.ch; 12 Oct 1999 09:55:15 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill.thinkcoach.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id HAA07010; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:18:42 +0200 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:18:42 +0200 Message-Id: <199910120518.HAA07010@quill.thinkcoach.com> X-Authentication-Warning: quill.thinkcoach.com: norbert set sender to Norbert Bollow using -f Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: (message from Chuq Von Rospach on Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:09:01 -0700) Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? References: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 3:25 PM -0700 10/11/99, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > > However, one > > of the problems with Majordomo is also that, for a high-traffic list, it's > > re-parsing the whole program (which is NOT a trivially-sized Perl script) > > for each post. Ouchie! > > But compared to the time spent queueing and delivering, it's still > statistically insignificant. Bulk_mailer or whatever you use as your > SMTP backend blows the recompilation out fo the water as far as > overhead, and sendmail blows that out. you can do huge performance > improvements simply by teaching the backend to directly write > sendmail Queue files, and that'll buy you more than anything you > could do to majordomo itself, other than the flat file problem. It should be noted that all the architectureal shortcomings of Majordomo 1.x which have been pointed out in this thread so far are solved in Majordomo 2. May blessings from the eternal God surprise and overtake you! Norbert. -- Norbert Bollow, Coach http://thinkcoach.com Backup email: nb@pobox.com > > In fact, 95% of my problems are directly related to disk I/O issues > -- disk I/O delays reading/writing subscriber files on the one side, > and disk I/O in the sendmail queue(s) on the other side. Running 450 > sendmails at once in a mail queue with a 5,000 or so batches in it -- > you spend a lot of time locked up waiting for the directory inodes to > free up. I've dealt with the latter, for right now, by simply using a > ram disk. And the former by replacing the flat files with MySQL. perl > being an interpretive language impacts the system less than running > "top" does... > > (grin) > > > Often times, this may be the way to do it. I've found it may be easier to > > write a custom app than make an existing one do things the way that works > > best for you. > > Depends on what you're doing. For my Big Honking Listserver, it > definitely does. For the smaller, more standard server, I want > something off the shelf, and since I need to either upgrade to > majordomo II or replace majordomo with something else, I've decided > it's time to go back to square one and evaluate everything. I like > the potential of majordomo II, but it just seems like they're trying > to do things that sympa had months ago. Sympa seems more solid, > further along the development path, and more solid/proven -- mj2 is > still really being shaken out. > > (and yes, I'm part of the problem with mj2 -- watching instead of > helping -- but a person only stretches so far...) > > > (Actually, as far as I'm concerned, all 'general' apps should be easily > > customizable and extendable - hence Listar's plugin architecture. But > > that's neither here nor there.) > > don't disagree a bit. A good, solid API is a good thing... > > > I've been a subscriber on lists using both; I tend to prefer Sympa over > > Mailman because I hate going to a website to tinker with subscription > > options. > > On the other hand, for the more naive and less-savvy internet users > that my lists tend to attract, it's a godsend. I can't tell you how > much mail I get from people who are scared to death by majordomo. > it's nice to be able to do those things by e-mail, but the web is so > endemic, I don't worry about that a bit any more. If I can only have > one interface, I'll take web in a nanosecond. > > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) > From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 05:22:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA29265; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 05:07:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA29258 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 05:07:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA21962; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:26:33 -0500 Message-ID: <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:29:49 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk You can't get mail without other someone else's computer. Mail lists, when open, are designed to allow limited use of those computers. This is a public service, open to all 24 hours a day seven days a week. Using a telephone as Chuq suggests would require direct human intervention to get the dang thing to stop ringing. It would seem odd to compare that with automatically answered email systems. Or maybe many people have the list management messages sent to their pagers? Forcing somebody out of bed at 3am is nothing like sending a message (or many) to their computer. In fact my computers have been accepting mail for this list all night quite nicely while I sleep comfortably. Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > At 5:32 PM -0500 10/11/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > Can any conclusions be drawn from this small sample? > > How about "you probably don't want to run experiments that use > someone else's computer without getting their okay first, or at least > warn them what's going to happen" > > Frankly, Steve, that's the ONLY thing I think you did wrong, whether > or not the experiment was ill-conceived or not. And frankly, I think > THAT's a fairly minor oopsie, but one that would almost never happen > outside of the virtual worlds. it's more an indication that we > haven't yet figured out how to handle the social dynamics of the > network, because I don't think anyone would ever consider something > like "well, I'm going to call every phone number in the 364- prefix > and see how many people answer at 2AM and what their responses are", > but it happens all of the time in the virtual world. > > And in both cases, you don't really have to ask permission first -- > those are all "public/open" interfaces. But as you've found out, it's > usually a lot less hassle to at least let people know, so they don't > make basic assumptions about what you're doing that might or might > not be correct. > > chuq > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 06:23:17 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA29865; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 06:04:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from crow.a001.sprintmail.com (crow.prod.itd.earthlink.net [209.178.63.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA29858 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 06:04:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rachel (sdn-ar-005waseatP241.dialsprint.net [168.191.239.3]) by crow.a001.sprintmail.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id GAA13895; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 06:23:40 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <003601bf14b4$d6084c00$03efbfa8@rachel> Reply-To: "Chris McEwen" From: "Chris McEwen" To: , "Ronald F. Guilmette" References: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 06:22:29 -0700 Organization: Socrates Press, Keyport WA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk First of all, I would think there are better ways to do legitimate research than this. If nothing else, I would have expected the person to approach me personally before running a script like this on my server. But let's stand back a moment and ask a question: If his research is meant to reduce spam, then does spam emanate from a list or rather is spam targeted to a list? If anything, my take on this is that the result of Mr. Goldberg's research would be to create spam that would find its way onto the lists. In answer to Ronald's specific question and in light of my above comments, I would certainly not give the information requested. --Chris McEwen Socrates Press, Keyport WA socrates@sprintmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Ronald F. Guilmette >, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > Steve Bergeon has answered a number of questions that I posed to him, and > I believe his answers. I have removed the block on his site. >> There were several goals for this obviously ill considered venture. Mostly >> I wanted to amass mail for analysis of both headers and content. To see >> what sort, if any, new spam would come with the new lists. To see what >> limits procmail had. That's not to say that his intent was anything other than honorable. I just think that it is incumbant upon anyone doing research like this to be quite clear and specific regarding the methods and goals. P.S. As long as we are still talking about it (and given that this episode makes it quite apparent that list admins may get their hackles raised by any sort of automated subscribes/unsubscribes) allow me to pose the question to the entire readership of this list: If someone sent you an E-mail (in your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, would you send that info back, or would you balk? From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 08:07:35 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA00950; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:58:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA00943 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 07:58:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA34506 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:18:19 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:17:11 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:29 AM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > Forcing somebody out of bed at 3am is nothing like sending a > message (or many) to their computer. true. I can usually go right back to sleep after cussing you out at 3AM, or my voice mail will catch it. But if you stuff messages at my computer and break it for some reason, guess who gets to pick up the pieces? Not you. Which is why you shouldn't do it without asking first. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 09:01:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA01511; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:45:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA01504 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:45:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA01069; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:03:48 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:03:48 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Marc Haber Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com Message-ID: <19991012120348.D510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Oct 11, 1999 at 09:04:02PM +0000, Marc Haber wrote: > Is there any mailing list manager that will work with a stock MTA > (that rules out listproc as I believe listproc only runs with qmail) > that can be configured to include full headers of the subscription > request with the confirmation request e-mail? SmartList does this by default. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 09:16:34 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA01682; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:54:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bigtime.blank.org (bigtime.blank.org [139.167.64.222]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA01667 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:54:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 6770 invoked by uid 500); 12 Oct 1999 16:13:28 -0000 Message-ID: <19991012121328.S1263@blank.org> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:13:28 -0400 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: nb@thinkcoach.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? References: <199910120518.HAA07010@quill.thinkcoach.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2i In-Reply-To: <199910120518.HAA07010@quill.thinkcoach.com>; from nb@thinkcoach.com on Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 07:18:42AM +0200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In the immortal words of nb@thinkcoach.com (nb@thinkcoach.com): > > It should be noted that all the architectureal shortcomings of > Majordomo 1.x which have been pointed out in this thread so far are > solved in Majordomo 2. ...which has been pre-release for, uh, how many years now? -n ------------------------------------------------------------ "...the irony of this development constitutes an enigma wrapped in a paradox bound up in a colostomy bag." (--www.suck.com) ------------------------------------------------ From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 09:22:21 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA01878; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:03:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA01871 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:03:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA01264; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:21:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 12:21:55 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Steve Bergeon Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Message-ID: <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 07:29:49AM -0500, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > Using a telephone as Chuq suggests would require direct human > intervention to get the dang thing to stop ringing. It would > seem odd to compare that with automatically answered email systems. > Or maybe many people have the list management messages sent to > their pagers? Many systems send reports of suspicious activity to the administrators. I have received up to 10,000 messages overnight when we're hit really hard by spam. I have been rousted out of bed to fix it. > Forcing somebody out of bed at 3am is nothing like sending a > message (or many) to their computer. Maybe not yours. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 09:37:05 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA02186; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:31:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA02179 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:31:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA23394; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:50:41 -0500 Message-ID: <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:50:18 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tim Pierce CC: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk But the lists are public, and meant to be joined in an automated manner. Again I am asking what acceptable limits may be, one person/list/server? Two? Three? Is it considered some sort of spam (obviously not UCE) to go over this threshold? The same stupid scripts got me onto this list, so one must be ok. Were you in fact called out of bed because of the number of mails, or was it notification of a loss of system resources related to the mail? Does your pager go off when somebody joins a list? Two? Three? Tim Pierce wrote: > > On Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 07:29:49AM -0500, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > > Using a telephone as Chuq suggests would require direct human > > intervention to get the dang thing to stop ringing. It would > > seem odd to compare that with automatically answered email systems. > > Or maybe many people have the list management messages sent to > > their pagers? > > Many systems send reports of suspicious activity to the > administrators. I have received up to 10,000 messages overnight when > we're hit really hard by spam. I have been rousted out of bed to fix it. > > > Forcing somebody out of bed at 3am is nothing like sending a > > message (or many) to their computer. > > Maybe not yours. > > -- > Regards, > Tim Pierce > RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator > and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 10:17:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA02476; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:55:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id JAA02467 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 09:55:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 9769 invoked by uid 50); 12 Oct 1999 17:14:51 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? References: From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Jeremy Blackman's message of "Mon, 11 Oct 1999 22:57:27 -0700 (PDT)" Date: 12 Oct 1999 10:14:51 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 49 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jeremy Blackman writes: > In his case, what was largely the problem was that his Perl was > misconfigured and was trying to parse through a GREAT many more Perl > libraries than was needed. Each invokation of resend took about 5 > _minutes_. Believe me, I helped track down and fix the > misconfiguration...it IS possible to do that. It is much HARDER to do > something like that (misconfigure in such a way) under C. Well, it's pretty hard to do that in Perl too (as in, I'm sitting here reading this and thinking "how on *earth* did you manage to do *that*?"). > I will also admit I am biased against writing applications in scripting > languages as a general rule, because I've seen some things done very, > very wrong in them. I've seen some things done wrong in C as well, and > I've seen some things done right in scripting languages, but as a > general rule for some reason I feel more like daemons and such should be > written in C or C++ or SOMETHING that compiles and produces a binary. Daemons, sure, since daemons pretty much have to handle signals and Perl doesn't handle signals all that overwhelmingly well. But a list manager doesn't really need to run as a daemon in the common case. Scripting languages buy you things like automatic memory management that are quite useful. Scripting languages also tend to have *massively* better available libraries than C and C++ at present; for example, look at all the stuff that Majordomo 2 does with MIME and note that practically no actual MIME code had to be written specifically for it. There were already standard libraries. Of course, Majordomo 1 is hardly a stellar example of writing in a scripting language; there's a running joke among Perl folks that it's a good regression suite for Perl 4 compatibility since it does things that scare Perl programmers. :) To be fair to the authors, Perl lacked a lot of capabilities for writing cleaner packages back when Majordomo was originally written, and it's been hacked a lot over the years. > When I see things on freshmeat like 'HTTP Daemon written in Perl' or > 'MTA written in Perl' or 'FTP client written in shell scripting > language', I just want to run screaming and hide under my desk. :) You don't use an HTTP daemon written in Perl to actually run a large site; you use it for rapid prototyping because it's way faster to test ideas in Perl than in C (no memory management to worry about, dynamic string handling, quick hashes and arrays, etc.). It's a good language for that. Then you figure out what you want to do and you recode in C. :) -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 10:51:07 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA02995; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:44:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from erzo.org (adsl-63-193-120-106.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.193.120.106]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA02988 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:43:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fafnir ([131.161.60.128]) by erzo.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA08151; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:44:00 -0700 Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.19991012105255.009c1b60@imap.skotos.net> X-Sender: appel@63.193.120.106 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:03:02 -0700 To: sbergeon@encephalon.com, twp@rootsweb.com From: Shannon Appel Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: chuqui@plaidworks.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:50 AM 10/12/1999 -0500, sbergeon@encephalon.com wrote: >But the lists are public, and meant to be joined in an automated >manner. Again I am asking what acceptable limits may be, one >person/list/server? Two? Three? Is it considered some sort of >spam (obviously not UCE) to go over this threshold? Here's a really simple rule: * It's acceptable to use a mailing list in the manner in which it is intended to be used. If you subscribe once, so you can read the mailing list, that's good; if you subscribe twice, so you can read it from work and from home, that's good; if you subscribe three times, so you can read it from work, from home, and from your old Aunt Edna's house, when you're forced to visit on alternate Wednesdays in October and July, that's good. If you're randomly subscribing a hundred addresses for whatever reason, it sounds like you're abusing a resource for your own purpose, not setting things up so that *you* can read the mailing list. Trying to argue legalisms, abusing them as you go, really only works in courtrooms, where the system is set up to be manipulated in that manner. (Which is what happens when you let lawyers write the laws.) Here's a corollary to that rule: * Don't be a hoser. I really can't imagine why that even needs to be explained more. Shannon From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 11:06:08 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA03162; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:55:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA03152 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:55:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA33874 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:12:38 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:56:25 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , Tim Pierce From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:50 AM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > Again I am asking what acceptable limits may be, one > person/list/server? Two? Three? Is it considered some sort of > spam (obviously not UCE) to go over this threshold? It depends on the server and the server's owner. That's why if you're doig something out of the ordinary, you should ask first. and you can't claim under any circumstances what you did was "ordinary usage". -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 11:21:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03470; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:15:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03455 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:14:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA35962 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:32:35 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <38037E98.B0407819@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <380355EB.ABB96831@encephalon.com> <38037E98.B0407819@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:33:21 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:31 PM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > Ok, that's the question I've been asking. What is acceptable use? > I can sign up for one list/server, no more? Or is that per day? > > I am asking first. This is the forum to this, neh? no, not unless you're sure the system administrator is on this list. And even then, the proper way is to email them directly, not hope they notice on the list. if you're going to dink with someone's system, ask them first. this is so tough? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 11:36:22 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03587; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:25:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03575 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:25:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA45926 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:42:29 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:39:36 -0700 To: Russ Allbery , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:14 AM -0700 10/12/99, Russ Allbery wrote: > You don't use an HTTP daemon written in Perl to actually run a large site; > you use it for rapid prototyping because it's way faster to test ideas in > Perl than in C (no memory management to worry about, dynamic string > handling, quick hashes and arrays, etc.). It's a good language for that. > Then you figure out what you want to do and you recode in C. :) then you ship it, beacause when you weren't looking, they changed your deadlines.... (grin) -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 12:01:25 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03626; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:27:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03616 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:27:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA33048 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:45:09 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <38037F74.7E492A27@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <4.2.0.58.19991012105255.009c1b60@imap.skotos.net> <38037F74.7E492A27@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:44:19 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , Shannon Appel From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: twp@rootsweb.com, chuqui@plaidworks.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:35 PM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > No disagreement here, but this is not the question. I did not sign > on to a single list multiple times. I signed up for multiple lists > once each. so you're claiming it's normal for us to expect someone to sign up to every list on a list server? And that this shouldn't worry us when it happens? Only time *I* ever see that is spam attacks. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 12:06:30 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03717; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:30:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03706 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:30:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA24147; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:49:33 -0500 Message-ID: <380382A5.5C5FC693@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:49:09 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <380355EB.ABB96831@encephalon.com> <38037E98.B0407819@encephalon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ok, right you are. What I meant was that I'm asking when to ask. Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > At 1:31 PM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > Ok, that's the question I've been asking. What is acceptable use? > > I can sign up for one list/server, no more? Or is that per day? > > > > I am asking first. This is the forum to this, neh? > > no, not unless you're sure the system administrator is on this list. > And even then, the proper way is to email them directly, not hope > they notice on the list. > > if you're going to dink with someone's system, ask them first. this > is so tough? > > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 12:21:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03427; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:13:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03420 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:13:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA24041; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:32:16 -0500 Message-ID: <38037E98.B0407819@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:31:52 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <380355EB.ABB96831@encephalon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Ok, that's the question I've been asking. What is acceptable use? I can sign up for one list/server, no more? Or is that per day? I am asking first. This is the forum to this, neh? Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > At 10:38 AM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > that's the problem -- what you consider an acceptable use might not > match that of the listserver owner. Which is why I suggested, gasp, > that you should ask first. Because the owner might not want to > participate in your test, or might misinterpret the action as > something else. which is, of course, exactly what happened. > > What's so hard about asking first before experimenting with someone > else's system? > > shrug > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 12:36:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03627; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:27:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03611 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:27:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA21278 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:45:11 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <380380DF.AEC9790D@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> <380380DF.AEC9790D@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:45:32 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:41 PM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > So the conclusion is that over one, ask the owner? I can > live with that. > > I completely agree that what I did was not ordinary usage. Is > there some way to implement the above policy as a list manager? > Because if I can do it, it can't be that hard. conclusion is if you're going to do something unusual, ask first. And any time you are poking at a server for reasons other than subscribing to lists because you want to read them, it's not normal. If you really intend to READ all 100 lists because you want to be on them, that's normal -- but don't be surprised if you get mail asking if you're crazy anyway.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 12:51:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03560; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:22:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03553 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:22:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA24092; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:41:59 -0500 Message-ID: <380380DF.AEC9790D@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:41:35 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk So the conclusion is that over one, ask the owner? I can live with that. I completely agree that what I did was not ordinary usage. Is there some way to implement the above policy as a list manager? Because if I can do it, it can't be that hard. Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > At 11:50 AM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > Again I am asking what acceptable limits may be, one > > person/list/server? Two? Three? Is it considered some sort of > > spam (obviously not UCE) to go over this threshold? > > It depends on the server and the server's owner. That's why if you're > doig something out of the ordinary, you should ask first. and you > can't claim under any circumstances what you did was "ordinary usage". > > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 13:06:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03756; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:34:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03745 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:34:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA24166; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:53:17 -0500 Message-ID: <38038385.1B2A82CC@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:52:53 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: Shannon Appel , twp@rootsweb.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <4.2.0.58.19991012105255.009c1b60@imap.skotos.net> <38037F74.7E492A27@encephalon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk No, I'm making no such claim. Just making a clarification about what actualy happened. I'm most completely convinced that what I did was unacceptable and I for one will not do it again. What I have been trying to do is discover the boundaries of acceptable, nothing more. Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > At 1:35 PM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > No disagreement here, but this is not the question. I did not sign > > on to a single list multiple times. I signed up for multiple lists > > once each. > > so you're claiming it's normal for us to expect someone to sign up to > every list on a list server? And that this shouldn't worry us when it > happens? > > Only time *I* ever see that is spam attacks. > > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 13:21:20 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA03161; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:55:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA03144 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:55:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA33868 ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:12:36 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <380355EB.ABB96831@encephalon.com> References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <380355EB.ABB96831@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 10:55:32 -0700 To: Steve Bergeon , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:38 AM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > If I provide a service like majordomo lists and a thousand > people sign up in a short period of time and it breaks, is > that the fault of the thousand users? That's my fault. > But if it's an > individual signing up for all of my thousand lists and it > breaks, is it the fault of that one user? > > A malicious attack of millions of mail is one thing, but my > confusion stems from what I thought was acceptable use of > a public service. that's the problem -- what you consider an acceptable use might not match that of the listserver owner. Which is why I suggested, gasp, that you should ask first. Because the owner might not want to participate in your test, or might misinterpret the action as something else. which is, of course, exactly what happened. What's so hard about asking first before experimenting with someone else's system? shrug -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 13:36:09 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA03794; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:37:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA03787 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:37:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA24195; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:56:19 -0500 Message-ID: <3803843B.E2872776@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:55:55 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> <380380DF.AEC9790D@encephalon.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Well now I know what's unusual for list managers. Believe it or not, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I've never claimed a powerfull hold on sanity. Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > At 1:41 PM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > So the conclusion is that over one, ask the owner? I can > > live with that. > > > > I completely agree that what I did was not ordinary usage. Is > > there some way to implement the above policy as a list manager? > > Because if I can do it, it can't be that hard. > > conclusion is if you're going to do something unusual, ask first. And > any time you are poking at a server for reasons other than > subscribing to lists because you want to read them, it's not normal. > If you really intend to READ all 100 lists because you want to be on > them, that's normal -- but don't be surprised if you get mail asking > if you're crazy anyway.... > > -- > Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) > Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 15:23:13 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA07055; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:18:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA07030 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:17:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA25145; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:36:22 -0500 Message-ID: <3803B8A6.A29F1C9C@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:39:34 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: paulh@hamjudo.com CC: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Trap lists is a great idea. I was thinking of making a meta-db of the user id's in all the lists. The database might keep the number of lists subscribed to, time stamp of last sign-on, maybe a field for weighting the other fields. The db would be checked as part of a new user id process against a policy file. The policy file might have things like a max number of lists per some time period. A zero time period would make the max absolute. Has anybody done this? Anybody think this would be useful? I'm volunteering some time as community service... Paul Haas wrote: > > On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > Ok, right you are. What I meant was that I'm asking when to ask. > > Any time you subscribe to a list as other than a normal participant. > > If you try to subscribe to the alumni list for a nonexistent school, then > I know, unambiguously, that you are not a normal participant. > > The trap lists exist to detect email bombings, spammers, sociologists, > slimeballs, etc... > > You can't use random lists, start with lists where you know some of the > ground rules. > > -- > paulh@hamjudo.com http://www.hamjudo.com > The April 97 WebSight magazine describes me as "(presumably) normal". From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 15:35:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA07278; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:32:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA07270 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:32:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.9.0/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA10255; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:51:49 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:51:49 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: Steve Bergeon cc: Chuq Von Rospach , Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-Reply-To: <380380DF.AEC9790D@encephalon.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > So the conclusion is that over one, ask the owner? I can > live with that. No, the conclusion is that if you're not using it for its intended purpose ask the owner. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 16:06:02 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA07593; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:54:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA07586 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:54:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA25381; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:13:37 -0500 Message-ID: <3803C162.3CB54C9F@encephalon.com> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:16:50 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeremy Blackman CC: Chuq Von Rospach , Tim Pierce , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Relationships between lists are important in judging proper use, this makes good sense. How could that concept be built into a meta database of lists vs users? A simplistic approach might be to say, "It's unlikely that more than three lists are related, so the sign-on threshold should be four [in time period x]"? Jeremy Blackman wrote: > > On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > So the conclusion is that over one, ask the owner? I can > > live with that. > > What I tend to notice is when someone subscribes to a bunch of UNRELATED > mailing lists. If I see someone subscribe to listar-support, listar-dev, > and listar-cvs, I probably won't think twice about it...when I pick up a > new package, I'll often subscribe to both support and development lists, > and a CVS notification list if there is one. > > If I see someone subscribe to every publically-viewable list on a machine > at once? THAT raises alarm bells. From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 16:20:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA07791; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:05:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mushi.colo.neosoft.com (mushi.colo.neosoft.com [206.109.6.82]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA07779 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:05:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19424 invoked from network); 12 Oct 1999 23:24:19 -0000 Received: from citadel.in.taronga.com (10.0.0.43) by mushi.in.taronga.com with SMTP; 12 Oct 1999 23:24:19 -0000 Received: by citadel.in.taronga.com (Postfix, from userid 101) id B530B322E2; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:22:58 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 18:22:58 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <19991012232258.B530B322E2@citadel.in.taronga.com> From: arielle@taronga.com (Stephanie da Silva) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:38 AM -0500 10/12/99, Steve Bergeon wrote: > A malicious attack of millions of mail is one thing, but my > confusion stems from what I thought was acceptable use of > a public service. Is your experiement server specific, or are you just interested in getting a lot of list mail? I'm sitting here wondering if you joined 1000 ONElist lists, if anyone would even notice? From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 12 16:36:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA07775; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:03:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA07768 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:03:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 15776 invoked by uid 50); 12 Oct 1999 23:23:09 -0000 To: Steve Bergeon Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3802658A.CE33A1E6@encephalon.com> <380329BC.69B8926B@encephalon.com> <19991012122155.F510@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> <380380DF.AEC9790D@encephalon.com> <3803843B.E2872776@encephalon.com> From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Steve Bergeon's message of "Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:55:55 -0500" Date: 12 Oct 1999 16:23:09 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 23 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Steve Bergeon writes: > Well now I know what's unusual for list managers. Believe it or not, it > seemed like a good idea at the time. I've never claimed a powerfull hold > on sanity. Just to back up what other people have already said, I'd personally consider any use of my list server other than looking for or subscribing to lists because you personally want to read them to be unusual. I won't necessarily get upset, but I'd never mind someone asking either. Someone who wanted to use one of my lists for statistical data analysis once did ask first, even though I never would have noticed anything odd since they were just subscribing to one list; I really appreciated the thought behind that. The list archiving and subscription services, on the other hand, are pathetically bad about not asking and just assuming they can do whatever they want. That gives me the impression that people are running things on the basis of "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission," which gives me a bad first impression before I've even interacted with them. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 05:38:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA18099; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:28:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from newmail.spectraweb.ch (newmail.spectraweb.ch [194.158.230.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA18092 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:28:44 -0700 (PDT) From: nb@thinkcoach.com Received: from quill.thinkcoach.com (194.230.232.44) by newmail.spectraweb.ch; 13 Oct 1999 14:44:36 +0200 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill.thinkcoach.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id HAA10955; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 07:11:57 +0200 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 07:11:57 +0200 Message-Id: <199910130511.HAA10955@quill.thinkcoach.com> X-Authentication-Warning: quill.thinkcoach.com: norbert set sender to Norbert Bollow using -f Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: <19991012121328.S1263@blank.org> (memory@blank.org) Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? References: <199910120518.HAA07010@quill.thinkcoach.com> <19991012121328.S1263@blank.org> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > Majordomo 1.x which have been pointed out in this thread so far are > > solved in Majordomo 2. > > ...which has been pre-release for, uh, how many years now? But the code exists and works :) -- NB From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 05:53:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA18167; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:37:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA18160 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:37:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id OAA08932 ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:56:56 +0200 (MEST) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:aumont@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id OAA14099 ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:56:52 +0200 Message-Id: <199910131256.OAA14099@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? In-reply-to: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:39:36 -0700. Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:56:52 +0200 From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Does perl script deamon manage correctly signals ? -Sympa is a perl script deamon, it handles correctly any kill -TERM (terminating current message task) Is interpreted perl powerfull enough ? -Running on a linux machine with Bi-P2 450 with 512 mega ram, sympa forks 1.000 sendmail in parallel (150.000 messages perform per hour) We plan to replace Sendmail by Postfix to reach some 2.000 or 3.000 // postfix (Sympa leaves the choice of the mailer (sendmail, postfix or qmail). In this configuration, the overload due to perl interpreter is really narrow. A prototype of WWSympa (a user and admin web interface to sympa) is currently running on the same machine. It uses FastCGI, so perl oesn't need to be launched at each http session. This interface uses nice perl programs such as MhOnarc with good response time even on the web interface and the mail robot. (concurent data access between sympa and wwsympa are managed by MySQL or PostgresQL without any replication of lists' data). Serge Aumont From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 06:08:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA18405; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:56:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA18398 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:56:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA27059; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:15:03 -0500 Message-ID: <3804869A.DE681AA9@encephalon.com> Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:18:18 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: paulh@hamjudo.com, list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Paul Haas wrote: > > On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > > Trap lists is a great idea. I was thinking of making a meta-db of > > the user id's in all the lists. The database might keep the number > > of lists subscribed to, time stamp of last sign-on, maybe a field > > for weighting the other fields. > > What problem are you solving? The problem is that list managers seem to feel that they have a policy for subscription, but there does not appear to any effort to enforce that policy. > > > The db would be checked as part of > > a new user id process against a policy file. The policy file might > > have things like a max number of lists per some time period. A zero > > time period would make the max absolute. > > Way too simplistic. That's why I threw it out for the list. Do you have suggestions for improvement? > > > Has anybody done this? > > > Anybody think this would be useful? > > No. Thanks for your feedback > > > I'm volunteering some time as community service... > > -- > paulh@hamjudo.com http://www.hamjudo.com > The April 97 WebSight magazine describes me as "(presumably) normal". From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 08:23:55 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA19807; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:11:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gva.net (MAIL.GVA.NET [216.80.135.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id IAA19800 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:11:27 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910131511.IAA19800@honor.greatcircle.com> Received: from default [216.80.135.121] by gva.net [216.80.135.3] with SMTP (MDaemon.v2.7.SP5.R) for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:46:42 -0400 From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:30:43 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Reply-to: bernie@fantasyfarm.com In-reply-to: <199910131256.OAA14099@home.cru.fr> References: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 11:39:36 -0700. X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12a) X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Return-Path: bernie@fantasyfarm.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 13 Oct 99, at 14:56, Aumont - Comite Reseaux des U wrote: > Does perl script deamon manage correctly signals ? > -Sympa is a perl script deamon, it handles correctly > any kill -TERM (terminating current message task) Be clear here: you can have a proper %SIG _handler_ for signals in Perl, but the fact is that signals *themselves* are not handled properly and a signal coming in at the wrong time can blow Perl out of the water. This is a known problem/limitation of Perl and has been discussed extensively. Folks writing signal-handling programs in perl are well advised to tread VERY carefully. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 10:37:57 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA21322; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:21:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA21315 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:21:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA40672 ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:39:14 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199910130511.HAA10955@quill.thinkcoach.com> References: <199910120518.HAA07010@quill.thinkcoach.com> <19991012121328.S1263@blank.org> <199910130511.HAA10955@quill.thinkcoach.com> Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:38:33 -0700 To: nb@thinkcoach.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:11 AM +0200 10/13/99, nb@thinkcoach.com wrote: >> > Majordomo 1.x which have been pointed out in this thread so far are >> > solved in Majordomo 2. >> >> ...which has been pre-release for, uh, how many years now? > > But the code exists and works :) But that's not always something you can explain to management to ther satisfaction. Some of us have to be very careful with what software gets used and how to get it approved for use. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 11:15:38 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA23099; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:03:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA23089 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:03:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA06526 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:44:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.9.0/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA09223; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:03:36 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:03:36 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: Steve Bergeon cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-Reply-To: <38037E98.B0407819@encephalon.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > Ok, that's the question I've been asking. What is acceptable use? > I can sign up for one list/server, no more? Or is that per day? Consider this: using anyone's resource for other than the intended purpose is not OK. If you join the "yodelers" list to discuss yodeling, cool. If you join it to teach someone how to subscribe to lists, or to collect headers for analysis, or to feed your archiver, or any other reason, ask permission. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 11:25:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA22930; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:01:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA22915 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:01:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from antiochus-fe0.ultra.net (antiochus-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA14307 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 15:02:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from voyager (d243.dial-4.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.67.243]) by antiochus-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult/n20340/mtc.v2) with SMTP id SAA11887 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:21:10 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19991011222149.00967290@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 18:21:49 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:16 AM 10/11/99 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >P.S. As long as we are still talking about it (and given that this episode >makes it quite apparent that list admins may get their hackles raised by >any sort of automated subscribes/unsubscribes) allow me to pose the question >to the entire readership of this list: If someone sent you an E-mail (in >your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the >envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, >would you send that info back, or would you balk? Actually, you might learn more by asking. The "automatic" method will fail on at least one major piece of software... LISTSERV (tm). Therein, in at least one mode, most envelope senders take on a default value. However, as a list-owner option, and with list-owner specified frequency, an occasional envelope goes out differently, with the recipient's address encoded in it. This allows multiple mailings most of the time, but with an ability to figure out what's bouncing by sending individual mails from time to time. Grabbing a sample envelope for a spam detector wouldn't get both types, and even worse, might end up with the recipient bouncing the probe message (which is the one that could be traced :-) Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 11:40:37 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA22970; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:01:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA22960 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:01:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from epithumia.math.uh.edu (epithumia.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA16138 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 17:35:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from tibbs@localhost) by epithumia.math.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id TAA03293; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 19:54:41 -0500 To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Jeremy Blackman , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Sympa? mailman? References: From: Jason L Tibbitts III Date: 11 Oct 1999 19:54:41 -0500 In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Mon, 11 Oct 1999 16:09:01 -0700" Message-ID: Lines: 27 User-Agent: Gnus/5.070065 (Pterodactyl Gnus v0.65) Emacs/20.3 Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach writes: CVR> I like the potential of majordomo II, but it just seems like they're CVR> trying to do things that sympa had months ago. Well, I've only heard one mention of Sympa before this thread and have never seen it nor have I been on any lists running it. I'm not really sure what its feature set is, although from what I can gather it is designed around storing the list databases in a real database and so it can make a couple of neat assumptions (like doing table joins to generate meta-lists). It's a neat idea, really. Mj2 currently uses DB as its backend (unless you choose to use flat files, which for some people is an absolute requirement). DB really does lead to some nice speed improvements. BTW, Mj2's feature set has been pretty stable for months now. CVR> (and yes, I'm part of the problem with mj2 -- watching instead of CVR> helping -- but a person only stretches so far...) Well, the same goes for me. I haven't been able to "sell" Mj2 to enough interested developers, so it languishes as a spare time project of mine. Too bad, really, but that's life. It's still nice to work on it; there are some neat things that it does that I just haven't seen elsewhere. - J< From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 11:55:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA23003; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:02:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA22993 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:02:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vjs.org (vjs.telephonet.com [207.252.88.49]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA21417 for ; Mon, 11 Oct 1999 21:08:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.252.88.49] (207.252.90.49) by vjs.org with ESMTP (Eudora Internet Mail Server 2.2); Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:26:52 -0400 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> References: <17667.939665773@monkeys.com> X-Organization: Little to None X-Mailer: Eudora 5.0 for Cray T3E-1200 Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 00:21:25 -0400 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Vince Sabio Subject: Re: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com (fwd) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ** Sometime around 11:16 -0700 10/11/1999, Ronald F. Guilmette sent us: >P.S. As long as we are still talking about it (and given that this episode >makes it quite apparent that list admins may get their hackles raised by >any sort of automated subscribes/unsubscribes) allow me to pose the question >to the entire readership of this list: If someone sent you an E-mail (in >your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the >envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, >would you send that info back, or would you balk? I don't see that this is particularly sensitive information, at least in my case. If the request originated from a human being (not a robot), and was accompanied by a reasonably legitimate-sounding explanation, I'd send back the requested info. If no explanation was initially volunteered, I'd have to admit to being both curious and somewhat suspicious; I'd certainly request an explanation before sending back the requested info. Sure, one could easily "forge" bounces for valid subscribers, and thus trigger their removal from mailing lists (this presupposes some form of bounce handling is in use at the site), but even if someone really did want to go to such lengths, he wouldn't need to get the envelope-from address from the list owner or server admin directly. In fact, if the motives really were disingenuous, he'd be a fool to request that kind of information directly; kinda puts him a the top of the suspects list when the problems begin. __________________________________________________________________________ Vince Sabio Got Bounces? vince-lists@vjs.org Got Jokes? Got Spam? From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 12:10:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA23042; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:02:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA23032 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:02:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id EAA29040 for ; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 04:52:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from SOUTINE2K ([160.43.47.9]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id IAA15619; Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:12:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: list poking chapter XVIII Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 08:12:08 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2918.2701 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <199910120635.XAA22933@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk -----Original Message----- Steve Bergeon wrote: >> Scripts were used to generate both the initial subscription message and the reply's with authorization. << Scripted authorization replies considered harmful. I am beginning to feel the urgent need for some kind of customization of the process so as to make "script confirms" prohibitively difficult. Every week I get more "legitimate" joins on my lists, from addresses that are clearly address bots. Jeffrey Goldberg wrote: > I am certainly willing to accept a story involving silly mistakes > and misunderstandings, but you've got to actually provide me with > a plausible story, instead of of saying "oops". ... > Until I get credible answers to those questions, I will consider your > activity hostile, and continue the blocking. Tinpot net.admin autocrats (TNA's) considered harmful. There are two kinds of people who run afoul of TNA's: actual spammers, who are far too busy harvesting data (in what turns out to be a very low-margin business) -- and too inured to the usual indignant pieties -- to give a rat's a** what guidelines, stern philosophies, conditions and socko arguments some TNA has carefully crafted. Take a number, there are 000387 complaints pending. And there are the genuinely innocent, who of course will be cowed and p***ed off by the thunderous little voice of authority, to no greater good. Personally I would never waste a moment of my time trying to make conversation with a spammer or attacker. They have their jobs and I have mine -- cut 'em off and if they want back in, let THEM write the pretty letters. Ron Guilmette asks: >> If someone sent you an E-mail (in your capacity as list managers) asking for a list of, for example, the envelope sender addresses used in outgoing traffic on/with your lists, would you send that info back, or would you balk? << I would never send it out. Anyone who genuinely needs this info (for an admin purpose rather than idle curiosity) should know how to get it without asking me. If they are a net.admin trying to cope with incoming list mail to their subscribers, they already have the examples they need. If they are a procmailing user with a legitimate need to be on one of the lists in question, they can join and examine the mail before writing their script line. And so forth. If the request came from someone I knew, I would email them asking why they were being an idiot. If it came from a stranger but appeared individually composed for me, I would answer no. If it came as a form letter, I would discard it silently and keep on truckin'. From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 21:51:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA00687; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:43:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id VAA00680 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:43:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 8743 invoked by uid 100); 14 Oct 1999 01:02:39 -0400 Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 01:02:39 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Tom Neff cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: spammers and list confirmations In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > "script confirms" prohibitively difficult. Every week I get more > "legitimate" joins on my lists, from addresses that are clearly address > bots. Do they deal with and acknowledge confirmations? If so, what kind of challenge do you do? I've experimented with three kinds: * The majordomo kind, where you have to send back a cookie that's a hash of the subscriber's address, so the software doesn't remember who tried to subscribe. It keeps spammers out, but it keeps too many real users out, too. * A cookie that the server remembers, which I originally wrote for soc.religion.unitarian-univ, the original robomoderated newsgroup and for abuse.net. The first time it hears from an address, it remembers the message, generates a cookie, and sends back an autoack with the cookie in the subject line and a bunch of boilerplate, in about the third paragraph of which is the magic phrase that has to appear on the first line of the response, "yes" for s.r.u-u and "I accept" for abuse.net. The response has to come from the right address, contain the cookie, and have the magic phrase. This works pretty well. It even keeps out lamers who are too impatient to read the welcome message. * The web kind, with a URL in the confirmation message that you click to confirm. I'm moving to these, since they're the least confusing and work even if the user's outgoing and incoming addresses are different. My main issue is how to do them and keep it reasonably easy for non-web users to confirm. In many cases it's a non-issue since the only way to subscribe is from a web site, but in general, I have to deal with it. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 23:21:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA01560; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:18:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id XAA01553 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:18:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 13050 invoked by uid 100); 14 Oct 1999 02:37:43 -0400 Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 02:37:43 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: Tom Neff , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > * A cookie that the server remembers, which I originally wrote for > > soc.religion.unitarian-univ, the original robomoderated newsgroup and for > > abuse.net. > > the majordomo2 concept, and also backported to 1.93.4 (or perhaps > patched into... I've got the sources around here and I can't remember > which). Much, much nicer than auth lines. But stll fairly easy for > naive users to get wrong, especially new users who don't read what > you send them. On one list I run, we did this for a while -- and had > 40% dropout rates. Mostly because new users just didn't, or didn't > realize they needed to. I put the cookie in the subject line, e.g. Subject: (wkjewk) Your subscription to the foob list We've received a subscription request ... That seems to help a lot, then all they have to do is put the "yes" in the body. I don't just accept any response with the cookie in the subject line, that's too easily spoofed by autoresponses, bounces, and broken vacation programs. > > * The web kind, with a URL in the confirmation message that you click to > > confirm. I'm moving to these, > > me to. On some of my lists, soon you'll have no way to subscribe via > email. I expect eventually all will be that way. And so the default > unsub will be via web, as will confirms. I do plan on keeping an > email "panic button" unsubscribe, but you can make it SO simple for > users by going to the web and using embedded links and customized > email and the like... In fact, I'm soon going to modify my "welcome" > message to include a customized link to an unsubscribe web page with > the name pre-encoded..... Well, sure. If the URLs are compact enough, you can stick them in the message footers. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 23:36:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA01639; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:23:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA01632 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:23:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA34742 ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:43:52 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:42:45 -0700 To: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Cc: Tom Neff , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:37 AM -0400 10/14/99, John R Levine wrote: > I put the cookie in the subject line, e.g. > > Subject: (wkjewk) Your subscription to the foob list > > We've received a subscription request ... > > That seems to help a lot, then all they have to do is put the "yes" in the > body. I don't just accept any response with the cookie in the subject line, > that's too easily spoofed by autoresponses, bounces, and broken vacation > programs. I like that approach. I'd also consider replacing the "yes" with a blank message, since that locks out the autoresponses and stuff, and requires a minimal conscious response. Even something as simple as "send back yes" will confuse some users, and you have to ddeal with included reply messages, ">", quotes around the word yes, and all that other stuff users do to try to be helpful.... > Well, sure. If the URLs are compact enough, you can stick them in the > message footers. which I've done on my lists (non-customized) for a long time. One of the best hacks I've ever found, since users don't read those "twice a month help files" anyway. The ones that keep them around don't need them re-mailed, the ones that do won't wait for them, and putting the basic info in a short footer solves the problems for both -- it's there when they need it, but not obtrusive. Going to a fully customized, verped setup is really high on my priority... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 13 23:52:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA01510; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:11:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA01503 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:11:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA34162 ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:31:46 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:30:39 -0700 To: John R Levine , Tom Neff From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:02 AM -0400 10/14/99, John R Levine wrote: > * The majordomo kind, where you have to send back a cookie that's a hash of > the subscriber's address, or more correctly, majordomo 1.94.3. and yes, it's a huge problem, because the auth line is simply too long, and mailers that word-wrap die badly, and leave users clueless why. I looked at fixing majordomo to read the second line, but the code is, um, not enthusiastic about being changedc. > * A cookie that the server remembers, which I originally wrote for > soc.religion.unitarian-univ, the original robomoderated newsgroup and for > abuse.net. the majordomo2 concept, and also backported to 1.93.4 (or perhaps patched into... I've got the sources around here and I can't remember which). Much, much nicer than auth lines. But stll fairly easy for naive users to get wrong, especially new users who don't read what you send them. On one list I run, we did this for a while -- and had 40% dropout rates. Mostly because new users just didn't, or didn't realize they needed to. (it's important to remember that we now have a growing population of users who understand web stuff better than email, unlike us old pharts. And many are scared and/or intimidated by email stuff and listserver stuff. So the more you look at dealing with these folks, the less complicated you need to make things...) > * The web kind, with a URL in the confirmation message that you click to > confirm. I'm moving to these, me to. On some of my lists, soon you'll have no way to subscribe via email. I expect eventually all will be that way. And so the default unsub will be via web, as will confirms. I do plan on keeping an email "panic button" unsubscribe, but you can make it SO simple for users by going to the web and using embedded links and customized email and the like... In fact, I'm soon going to modify my "welcome" message to include a customized link to an unsubscribe web page with the name pre-encoded..... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 00:06:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA01621; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:22:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail6.svr.pol.co.uk (mail6.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA01612 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:22:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from modem-35.ibuprofin.dialup.pol.co.uk ([62.136.73.35] helo=arpad.thegreen.private ident=exim) by mail6.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 11bea8-0002Jl-00; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 07:41:45 +0100 Received: from cc047 (helo=localhost) by arpad.thegreen.private with local-esmtp (Exim 3.036 #1) id 11bea1-0006Oq-00; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 07:41:37 +0100 Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 07:41:36 +0100 (BST) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@arpad.thegreen.private Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: Steve Bergeon cc: Tim Pierce , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-Reply-To: <380366CA.63CD6D3F@encephalon.com> Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > But the lists are public, and meant to be joined in an automated > manner. Again I am asking what acceptable limits may be, one > person/list/server? Two? Three? Is it considered some sort of spam > (obviously not UCE) to go over this threshold? I have to sort of agree with Steve here. Mailing lists systems are automatic systems designed to automate or semi-automate subscription activity (as well as other things). But there is still a massive assymetry. Many lists are set up to involve some human intervention by the list manager for subscription (to approve subscriptions). So a scripted subscription attempt that hit say, 10000, lists might hit 1000 closed subscription lists, and in the best of circumstances (no suspicion of attack) would require separate manual action by 1000 different list managers. > Were you in fact called out of bed because of the number of mails, > or was it notification of a loss of system resources related to > the mail? Does your pager go off when somebody joins a list? Two? > Three? There certainly was no problem with the load (and if there was that would be my problem. Our system should easily carry a bunch of simultaneous subscription attempts). I was not woken up by this, but I certainly cost me a real amount of time once I did notice it. It's not the number of subscription requests, but the indiscriment nature of them. I saw an address subscriping and attempting to subscribe to lists at Cranfield indiscriminantly. At the time, I could imagine no non-malign reason why anyone would do that. It's not the number of lists, it is the manner in which they are selected. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 03:06:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA04803; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 02:52:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA04796 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 02:52:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id MAA18422 ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:12:16 +0200 (MEST) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:aumont@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id MAA02473 ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:12:16 +0200 Message-Id: <199910141012.MAA02473@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations In-reply-to: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:30:39 -0700. Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 12:12:16 +0200 From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Let me explain Sympa's choice about this topics : Sympa returns a confirmation message for subscription (if the list is configured for it). This message is replyable in order to confirm the subscription request. The cookie for confirmation is in the subject field so quoted printable transfert encoding and crasy multipart/alternative message structure do not affect reply confirmation. Note that you can configure a list to accept subscription request without confirmation message depending on subcriber adress and ask a request confirmation to other subscriber and/or ask owner for validation of the subscription. The "private" (privilege of sending messages in the list restricted to subscribers ) is a nice way to block spam but it also restrict the sending privilège for person who subscribe with a non canonical adress. As most MLMs, Sympa allows configuration of lists to be private but the config describe what to do when incoming message sender is not subscriber : either - reject it, - request sender confirmation - ask moderator agreement. Serge Aumont From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 05:56:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA08116; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 05:48:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA08109 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 05:48:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA30986; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 08:08:06 -0500 Message-ID: <3805D67D.D273127@encephalon.com> Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 08:11:25 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Roger B.A. Klorese" CC: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Thanks, got that now. What I'm wondering is, "is there any way to enforce this policy?" My half baked idea being rejected, anybody else want to anty up? "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: > > On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > Ok, that's the question I've been asking. What is acceptable use? > > I can sign up for one list/server, no more? Or is that per day? > > Consider this: using anyone's resource for other than the intended purpose > is not OK. If you join the "yodelers" list to discuss yodeling, cool. If > you join it to teach someone how to subscribe to lists, or to collect > headers for analysis, or to feed your archiver, or any other reason, ask > permission. > -- > ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG > PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF > "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 06:55:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA08738; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 06:43:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA08731 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 06:43:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from PINTA2K ([160.43.147.201]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id KAA26273; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:02:29 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tom Neff" To: Cc: "John R Levine" Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:02:31 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2918.2701 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk John R Levine [mailto:johnl@iecc.com] wrote: >Tom Neff wrote: >> "script confirms" prohibitively difficult. Every week I get more >> "legitimate" joins on my lists, from addresses that are clearly address >> bots. > >Do they deal with and acknowledge confirmations? If so, what kind of >challenge do you do? I have two challenge systems: * one is Web based, with a cookie that the server remembers. * The other is stock Majordomo confirm, with the stateless hash. The Web based challenge system does not get abused by spammers, primarily because it's hand-rolled and they have little motive or opportunity to reverse engineer it. Of course if I offered it to the world and it became popular, they would hack it in a week. The stock MJ confirm is only good for catching users with bad mail setups, e.g. their configured From: address is wrong. Spammers have script driven "confirms" in regular use. I can't say I'm surprised, as I could hack one together in an hour if I needed it :) > * The web kind, with a URL in the confirmation message that you click to > confirm. Unfortunately, these are, if anything, easier to script, since detecting the URL in the message body is fairly trivial. What I would like to see is a confirm-request message that VARIES in quasi-unpredictable ways that make it still easy for an actual human to read it, do what it says and confirm the signup -- but remarkably difficult for a script driven procmail filter to accomplish the same thing. The way to do it would be to employ some of the same tricks that people do to avoid having their addresses spammed in email lists and web pages these days: "To send me mail, remove the HIPPOPOTAMUS and change the last Q to a 3..." etc. There would be a randomly selected message template from a suite of many of them, each containing a different English language explanation of how to confirm. For example, one might say ========== If you D O N O T want to join XYZ-L, send mail to 209urwe0dfj@xyz-l.com or click on the URL http://www.xyz-l.com/3240dfs409ew . If you D O want to join, look in the list below and send email to the address you find next to the flower name: buffalo ..... 3043if30if@xyz-l.com ..... penny apple ..... 094g4305gi4@xyz-l.com ..... quince tulip ..... 457fy33847fh3@xyz-l.com ..... marigold sedan ..... 4e43f9345f@xyz-l.com ..... truck ========== Getting a hit or a message at any of the decoy addresses would invalidate the join. From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 08:55:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA09890; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 08:44:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from raven.a001.sprintmail.com (raven.prod.itd.earthlink.net [209.178.63.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA09883 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 08:44:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rachel (sdn-ar-004waseatP326.dialsprint.net [168.191.238.232]) by raven.a001.sprintmail.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id JAA14436; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:03:51 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <00f701bf165d$7fa8c600$e8eebfa8@rachel> Reply-To: "Chris McEwen" From: "Chris McEwen" To: "Steve Bergeon" , "Roger B.A. Klorese" Cc: "Chuq Von Rospach" , References: <3805D67D.D273127@encephalon.com> Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:02:19 -0700 Organization: Socrates Press, Keyport WA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Sure. I'll enforce the policy. You fool around on my system and I block your domain. That seems simple. You've already been told by half a dozen people that to use their resources for other than the stated intentions (e.g. joining a list on yodeling to discuss yodeling -- NOT to examine headers) is a violation of trust. How violations of trust per day do you expect to be permitted? --Chris McEwen Socrates Press, Keyport WA socrates@sprintmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Bergeon Thanks, got that now. What I'm wondering is, "is there any way to enforce this policy?" My half baked idea being rejected, anybody else want to anty up? "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: > > On Tue, 12 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > > Ok, that's the question I've been asking. What is acceptable use? > > I can sign up for one list/server, no more? Or is that per day? > > Consider this: using anyone's resource for other than the intended purpose > is not OK. If you join the "yodelers" list to discuss yodeling, cool. If > you join it to teach someone how to subscribe to lists, or to collect > headers for analysis, or to feed your archiver, or any other reason, ask > permission. From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 10:41:20 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA10998; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:21:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA10991 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:21:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA30958 ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:39:50 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:38:12 -0700 To: "Tom Neff" , From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Cc: "John R Levine" Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:02 AM -0400 10/14/99, Tom Neff wrote: > The Web based challenge system does not get abused by spammers, primarily > because it's hand-rolled and they have little motive or opportunity to > reverse engineer it. Of course if I offered it to the world and it became > popular, they would hack it in a week. Not if you did it right -- which is to NOT do what majordomo did, and send it out with a pre-defined hash default that nobody changes (or few change). As long as every site is required to set up their own hash value, it'd be very hard for a spammer to hack into it, even with access to the source. (a good way to do this is similar to how PHP does it, by asking folks to type in random characters until it gets "enough") > The stock MJ confirm is only good for catching users with bad mail setups, > e.g. their configured From: address is wrong. Spammers have script driven > "confirms" in regular use. I can't say I'm surprised, as I could hack one > together in an hour if I needed it :) so change the hash values in majordomo.cf. Then they can script it, but it won't validate the AUTH line. > Unfortunately, these are, if anything, easier to script, since detecting the > URL in the message body is fairly trivial. but we get back to the issue, which is that of verification. If the user can't use the URL to validate without getting a cookie via email, and that cookie can't be reversed engineered, it doesn't matter if they can get to the URL and script it. Teh weakness in MJ is that the hashes are well-known, so a hacker can make some basic assumptions to circumvent that "return a cookie" part. heck, by carrying state on the address like MJ2 and Majordomo's 1.53.4 version of the confirmation keys does, you can literally use one time keys, and so it doesn't what the hackers try. > of many of them, each containing a different English language explanation of > how to confirm. That's the rub. At some level, the more you assume they're fluent in english, the more you're going to run into issues. The hackers, especially, don't worry about fluency when they attack someone. As my lists have internationalized, I've gotten really sensitive to this issue -- even if the content is english, you can't really assume the the users are technically savvy or can decipher stuff like: > For example, one might say > > ========== > If you D O N O T want to join XYZ-L, send mail to 209urwe0dfj@xyz-l.com > or click on the URL http://www.xyz-l.com/3240dfs409ew . > If you D O want to join, look in the list below and send email to the > address you find next to the flower name: Better to use a one-time key, keep state of it, and make it as simple as humanly possible for the end user. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 13:40:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA13073; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:19:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA13066 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:19:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA32336; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:38:42 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:38:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites cc: Chuq Von Rospach , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations In-Reply-To: <199910141012.MAA02473@home.cru.fr> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites wrote: > Let me explain Sympa's choice about this topics : > > Sympa returns a confirmation message for subscription (if the > list is configured for it). This message is replyable in order > to confirm the subscription request. > > The cookie for confirmation is in the subject field so > quoted printable transfert encoding and crasy multipart/alternative > message structure do not affect reply confirmation. [snip] This is not a safe assumption to make. While it does keep multipart/alternative out of your hair, it does NOT mean you are safe from quoted-printable. I have seen quoted-printable subject fields: Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Forms_4=2E5_-=3E_5=2E0_konverte It was one of the earliest Listar feature requests when we opened the bug database (entry #16, in fact), to allow Listar to decode quoted-printable subjects for commands and for digest/archive/etc. The -only- safe way to be 100% sure that a command address gets a parsable reply is to add a way to actually understand multipart/* and quoted-printable, and decode anything sent to a list command address down into plaintext. (This is what Listar does.) Including the ticket in the subject is -comparitively- safe, but never assume that the subject won't contain quoted-printable, because it is allowed to. It's annoying when it does, but... From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 15:55:51 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14780; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:46:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id PAA14773 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:46:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 29091 invoked by uid 50); 14 Oct 1999 23:05:41 -0000 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations References: From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:38:12 -0700" Date: 14 Oct 1999 16:05:41 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 20 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > At 10:02 AM -0400 10/14/99, Tom Neff wrote: >> The stock MJ confirm is only good for catching users with bad mail >> setups, e.g. their configured From: address is wrong. Spammers have >> script driven "confirms" in regular use. I can't say I'm surprised, as >> I could hack one together in an hour if I needed it :) > so change the hash values in majordomo.cf. Then they can script it, but > it won't validate the AUTH line. They can still script it for every list on your server. All they need is one return from a subscribe and knowledge of the hashing algorithm; I think DJB has the mathematical details somewhere. The Majordomo hash function isn't cryptographically strong. You could replace it with one that is, of course. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 16:10:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA14752; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:44:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id PAA14745 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 15:44:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 29088 invoked by uid 50); 14 Oct 1999 23:04:03 -0000 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations References: From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:42:45 -0700" Date: 14 Oct 1999 16:04:03 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 22 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > At 2:37 AM -0400 10/14/99, John R Levine wrote: >> That seems to help a lot, then all they have to do is put the "yes" in >> the body. I don't just accept any response with the cookie in the >> subject line, that's too easily spoofed by autoresponses, bounces, and >> broken vacation programs. > I like that approach. I'd also consider replacing the "yes" with a blank > message, since that locks out the autoresponses and stuff, and requires > a minimal conscious response. Even something as simple as "send back > yes" will confuse some users, and you have to ddeal with included reply > messages, ">", quotes around the word yes, and all that other stuff > users do to try to be helpful.... On the other hand, some people will be unable to send a blank message. Consider automatically appended signatures (often without a delimiter), VCards, company-added disclaimers, free e-mail advertisements, S/MIME junk, and the like. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 20:40:43 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA17438; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:24:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA17431 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:24:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA00653; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:43:44 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:43:39 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Russ Allbery Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Message-ID: <19991014234339.A466@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Oct 14, 1999 at 04:04:03PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Chuq Von Rospach writes: > > At 2:37 AM -0400 10/14/99, John R Levine wrote: > > >> I don't just accept any response with the cookie in the > >> subject line, that's too easily spoofed by autoresponses, bounces, and > >> broken vacation programs. > > > I like that approach. I'd also consider replacing the "yes" with a blank > > message ... > > On the other hand, some people will be unable to send a blank message. Folks who use a mail system that supports extended e-mail addresses could conceivably take advantage of that. For example, with qmail: To confirm, send mail to widgets-subscribe-09f8bc1d0a@example.com. With sendmail: To confirm, send mail to widgets-request+09f8bc1d0a@example.com. and so on. I'm sure this has been tried, right? -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 20:55:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA17666; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:44:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA17659 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 20:44:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA27614 ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:05:24 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 21:01:32 -0700 To: Russ Allbery , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:04 PM -0700 10/14/99, Russ Allbery wrote: > On the other hand, some people will be unable to send a blank message. > Consider automatically appended signatures (often without a delimiter), > VCards, company-added disclaimers, free e-mail advertisements, S/MIME > junk, and the like. good point. Although you could work around that, it ends up being more work than not doing it that way... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 14 23:08:19 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA18774; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:00:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA18718 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:00:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id IAA05090 ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:19:46 +0200 (MEST) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:aumont@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id IAA24063 ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:19:45 +0200 Message-Id: <199910150619.IAA24063@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: Jeremy Blackman Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations In-reply-to: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 13:38:41 -0700. Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:19:45 +0200 From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > > The cookie for confirmation is in the subject field so > > quoted printable transfert encoding and crasy multipart/alternative > > message structure do not affect reply confirmation. > [snip] > > This is not a safe assumption to make. While it does keep > multipart/alternative out of your hair, it does NOT mean you are safe from > quoted-printable. I have seen quoted-printable subject fields: > > Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Forms_4=2E5_-=3E_5=2E0_konverte > Of course Sympa decode header QP encoding (even if this is not really usefull for subscription confirmation request which are pur 7bit strings). Serge Aumont From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 07:27:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA25828; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 07:07:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cranium.encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA25821 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 07:07:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from encephalon.com (cranium.encephalon.com [208.246.217.212]) by cranium.encephalon.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA02291; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:27:10 -0500 Message-ID: <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:26:45 -0500 From: Steve Bergeon X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4m) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chris McEwen CC: "Roger B.A. Klorese" , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour References: <3805D67D.D273127@encephalon.com> <00f701bf165d$7fa8c600$e8eebfa8@rachel> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Yeah it's simple, even simplistic. Also reactive and after the fact. You all would rather have your beepers go off and have to scramble around at whatever hour to close the barn doors after the fact rather than be proactive and enforce a policy by the use of technology? Isn't that like saying you would connect to the internet without a firewall and just yell at whoever violates your assumed policies? Maybe policy implementation is a foreign term for this list. Chris McEwen wrote: > > Sure. I'll enforce the policy. You fool around on my system and I block your > domain. That seems simple. > From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 08:12:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA26157; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 07:53:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA26150 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 07:53:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.9.0/8.9.1) with ESMTP id IAA05339; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:13:30 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:13:30 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: Steve Bergeon cc: Chris McEwen , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-Reply-To: <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: > You all would rather have your beepers go off and have > to scramble around at whatever hour to close the barn doors > after the fact rather than be proactive and enforce a policy > by the use of technology? Where possible, rather than invoke technology, I'd rather a policy of common decency were well-known, and that people acted decently. The burden's on you for now. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 10:12:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA27244; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:57:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from crow.a001.sprintmail.com (crow.prod.itd.earthlink.net [209.178.63.7]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA27237 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:57:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rachel (sdn-ar-005waseatP260.dialsprint.net [168.191.239.22]) by crow.a001.sprintmail.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with SMTP id KAA15196; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:17:04 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <002e01bf1730$eed0e5c0$16efbfa8@rachel> Reply-To: "Chris McEwen" From: "Chris McEwen" To: "Steve Bergeon" Cc: "Roger B.A. Klorese" , "Chuq Von Rospach" , References: <3805D67D.D273127@encephalon.com> <00f701bf165d$7fa8c600$e8eebfa8@rachel> <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com> Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:15:50 -0700 Organization: Socrates Press, Keyport WA MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Policy implementation is not a foreign concept here in the slightest. We are also aware that there are people behind the machines. Even if you program your machine to break mine, it wasn't the machine that did it, but you. You have been discussing at what level do we take an attack seriously. We are answering that an attack at any level violates the intention of a list service. You ask again when we would assume a defensive posture and we reply again that any attack is an attack. We are talking in circles. This isn't a discussion of policy implementation. You attack. We respond. We don't lock out the whole world because you might attack. Evidently you aren't interested in lists for their content but rather for the potential to break them. On the other hand, most list administrators are motivated by the thought that they are providing something of value to their list members. The technology seems to fascinate you, but list content interests the admins. The machines are simply tools. Sorry to say this, Steve, but your approach seems rather pathological. --Chris McEwen Socrates Press, Keyport WA socrates@sprintmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Bergeon Yeah it's simple, even simplistic. Also reactive and after the fact. You all would rather have your beepers go off and have to scramble around at whatever hour to close the barn doors after the fact rather than be proactive and enforce a policy by the use of technology? Isn't that like saying you would connect to the internet without a firewall and just yell at whoever violates your assumed policies? Maybe policy implementation is a foreign term for this list. From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 10:27:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA27554; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:18:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA27547 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:18:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA23280 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:40:21 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 15 Oct 1999 08:13:30 -0700. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:40:21 -0700 Message-ID: <23278.940009221@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: >On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Steve Bergeon wrote: >> You all would rather have your beepers go off and have >> to scramble around at whatever hour to close the barn doors >> after the fact rather than be proactive and enforce a policy >> by the use of technology? > >Where possible, rather than invoke technology, I'd rather a policy of >common decency were well-known, and that people acted decently. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, any expectation of adherence to _anyone's_ definition of "common decency" among all members of a large community (e.g. the net community, which now numbers in excess of 100 million souls) is bound to be disappointed. If it were possible to rely upon universal adherence to obvious and widely held standards of "common decency", would there exist mailing lists, newsgroups, and yes, even books dedicated to the topic of spam? I agree that it would be nice if we could rely on the decency of strangers, but given that we can't, what's your second choice? From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 10:51:27 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA27374; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:05:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA27367 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:05:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA48444 ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:24:05 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <002e01bf1730$eed0e5c0$16efbfa8@rachel> References: <3805D67D.D273127@encephalon.com> <00f701bf165d$7fa8c600$e8eebfa8@rachel> <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com> <002e01bf1730$eed0e5c0$16efbfa8@rachel> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:25:11 -0700 To: "Chris McEwen" , "Steve Bergeon" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: "Roger B.A. Klorese" , "Chuq Von Rospach" , Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:15 AM -0700 10/15/99, Chris McEwen wrote: > Policy implementation is not a foreign concept here in the slightest. We spend most of this list's time arguing over policy issues. Think of this list as the United Nations. Because right off the top, not everyone who runs lists is on this list, so we can't set policy for them. And even people on this list set their own policy. List-managers is a place for high-level discussions of issues of common need, but then everyone goes off and does what they feel is best. So when you come to list-managers looking for a policy, you won't find it. if you went to the United Nations to find out what the policy was for burglary, you'd be told to go ask the country you plan to burgle in. Which, gee, isn't that what we've been basically saying all along? Each list-manager runs things their own way. There IS no single policy, no should there be. And before you poke at someone's list-server, you should ask them about it. Because some list-managers won't care. Some will act like Singapore and deport you for littering. And some wll act like North Korea, and you'll be really, really unhappy. Why is this so tough? This is the internet. it's a large group of semi-cooperation operations. Asing for "The policy" is like asking a beehive while bee is in charge. The asnwer is "yes". And "no". -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 10:57:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA27393; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:08:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA27386 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:07:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA23008 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:30:03 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 15 Oct 1999 09:26:45 -0500. <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:30:03 -0700 Message-ID: <23006.940008603@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com>, Steve Bergeon wrote: >Yeah it's simple, even simplistic. Also reactive and after the >fact. You all would rather have your beepers go off and have >to scramble around at whatever hour to close the barn doors >after the fact rather than be proactive and enforce a policy >by the use of technology? Mr. Bergeon, I've kept quiet so far, because I personally have already had more than my share of these sorts of arguments with people in the past, and because I don't actually have either the time or the inclination to get embroiled in yet another one at this moment. But let me just say two things... #1) I am _very_ sympathetic to your position, for reasons that are well known to some/many members of this particular mailing list. #2) Regardless of that fact that you may have found a kindred spirit in me, in general, you are going to find your position, and your argument to be an extremely "tough sell", both here on this list, and elsewhere on the net. The reasons for that are complex and varied. There are undoubtedly many many cases of system administrators who are either too lazy to apply all necessary and proper automated security measures to protect their systems from outside activities that they disapprove of, or else who are not in a position to adequately apply such measures because of limitations of the operating systems and/or harware that they, perhaps through no fault of their own, are stuck using. Simply telling these people (in effect) that they ought to get their acts together will NOT win you any friends OR make you very many converts. Trust me. I know. Separately however, chiding people for what would superficially seem to be serious gaps in security with respect to anything related to E-mail (e.g. mailing list subscription requests and their processing) is not entirely fair to the people you are chiding. Something that people (including myself) sometimes lose site of is the fact that E-mail, by itse very nature is _designed_ to be ``insecure''. Most folks (and most mail servers) accept E-mail from literally anybody. This is by intent. Obviously being "open" in this way to a world full of real and potential miscreants creates many kinds of "security" hazards, but until better tools and technologies are developed which give admins better control over the E-mail traffic that flows into or out of their systems, most simply have only two choices in the matter... i.e. accept E-mail from outside, and live with the implications and hazards of that, or else give up and stop running a mail server altogether. So far, most people, including myself, have elected the former alternative, even though we know this effectively open us up to all sorts of creative abuses (e.g. mailbombing, subscription bombing, etc., etc.) on the part of the innumerable miscreants on the net these days, but just telling us to work harder to deploy more automated security (in order to protect ourselves from such problems) is not really a productive, polite, or appropriate thing for you to do until such time as better "E-mail security" tools/controls are available which will allow us to do exactly that. Having said all that, I should also say that I _do_ feel that you are pushing on an issue which _needs_ pushing on. The implementors of mailing list packages (some of whom are here) need to think longer, harder, and deeper about implementing more and better "security controls", for example, automated checks that will automatically shut down the perp, if and when a whole set of subsubscription requests comes in (for a given subscriber address) in rapid succession. When and if such controls become generally available, THEN you can properly chide anyone who fails to use them to automatically protect their sites. But until then, your chastizements are not particularly productive. From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 11:55:41 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA28436; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:37:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA28429 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:37:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA08856 ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:55:56 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <23278.940009221@monkeys.com> References: <23278.940009221@monkeys.com> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:57:08 -0700 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:40 AM -0700 10/15/99, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > I agree that it would be nice if we could rely on the decency of strangers, > but given that we can't, what's your second choice? beating them with a stick until they submit? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 12:41:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA28906; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:23:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shallot.uk.research.att.com (shallot.cam-orl.co.uk [158.124.64.109]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA28899 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 12:22:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from marrow ([158.124.64.61]) by shallot.uk.research.att.com with esmtp (Exim 2.02 #3) id 11cDFS-0004X0-00 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 20:42:42 +0100 Received: by marrow (8.8.8+Sun/ATT-LAB-CAM-1.0) id UAA20807; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 20:42:37 +0100 (BST) From: Aideen McConville MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 20:42:37 +0100 (BST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: MDaemon mis-behaviour? X-Mailer: VM 6.43 under 20.4 "Emerald" XEmacs Lucid Message-ID: <14343.32516.828838.632334@marrow> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, We recently had a problem with duplicated messages on one of our Majordomo mailing lists which was tracked down to a new subscriber who was using MDaemon. Apparently MDaemon doesn't cope very well with mailing lists; it needs a local alias (or "routing rule") mapping the mailing list address to local recipients. Without this it resends the message back to the mailing list! Is this a generally known about problem? Does it only affect lists managed by Majordomo? (using resend) Is there any way to guard against it? Thanks, -- Aideen From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 13:24:40 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA29381; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:18:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA29373 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 13:18:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id QAA05444 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:37:47 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991015154810.035c6e40@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:48:10 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-Reply-To: <380739A5.23E6AE81@encephalon.com> References: <3805D67D.D273127@encephalon.com> <00f701bf165d$7fa8c600$e8eebfa8@rachel> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Steve, if you can come up with a policy that is actually enforcable by any application/combination of programming and technology, or one that is even articulatable, and it represents something that I want to do, I'd go with it. It would have to be based on a detectable sequence of actions, of course, so that it could be programmed at all. So far, all I've seen is that "someone signing up for a lot of lists might be a address harvester". I run lists on my site that relate to road-rallying, firearms, scuba diving, western style shooting, science fiction, and Howard Stern. Is it impossible that someone might discover my site and decide that they are interested in these things? Heck, I'm interested in all of these things, that is why the lists are here. It is not impossible that another individual would be interested in many or all of these things? I've actually found the conversation here very enlightening. So far, I have been inspired to implement a web based confirmation engine - I've been convinced that there are folks who simply can't send the mail required by majordomo for confirmation, even thought they might be able to start the subscribe process. --- although they might be able to click on a URL. I've patted myself on the back for having switched to MD5 auth codes from Majordomo hashes. I've put something else on the list of things that demime must do (decode QP subjects) and so forth. But I'm still unsure as to when to decide that a person subscribing to a lot of lists is an attack. Should I put a list up with a description that says, "subscribe to this list to be barred from all other lists?" This would be something that any human would notice but which an automated attacker might not. In my web subscription interface, I build a giant page that lists every public list on my system. The user has already exchanged a confirmation token by e-mail, and the subscription process that the user sees at that point is as simple as checking a box and then confirming on the web. (Why yes, I do use majordomo, but not majorcool). So I get a lot of people who come for one list and then decide to try 3-4 more. Sometimes these are users who have been using my system for years. Sometimes I get unsubs after a day, sometimes not. I just do not think of multiple list subs as a bad thing, unless the intention is misuse. And I don't think that the "psychic board" is supported under Linux - they won't release the specs so no one can write a driver. I'm just throwing out an idea here. I don't think that there is a good thing that we can do here, or if there is I don't understand it. In many cases, I see this as something that only a human moderator can deal with - at some point, use becomes misuse, and it takes a human to draw the line. If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it. At 09:26 AM 10/15/99 -0500, Steve Bergeon wrote: > >Yeah it's simple, even simplistic. Also reactive and after the >fact. You all would rather have your beepers go off and have >to scramble around at whatever hour to close the barn doors >after the fact rather than be proactive and enforce a policy >by the use of technology? Isn't that like saying you would >connect to the internet without a firewall and just yell at >whoever violates your assumed policies? > >Maybe policy implementation is a foreign term for this list. > >Chris McEwen wrote: >> >> Sure. I'll enforce the policy. You fool around on my system and I block your >> domain. That seems simple. >> > -- I'm going to change my name to 'Squawk' because that is what my parrots call me. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 14:25:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA29971; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:17:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA29964 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:17:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA29713 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:39:30 -0700 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:57:08 -0700. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:39:30 -0700 Message-ID: <29711.940023570@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 10:40 AM -0700 10/15/99, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > >> I agree that it would be nice if we could rely on the decency of strangers, >> but given that we can't, what's your second choice? > >beating them with a stick until they submit? That is a rather ill-advised and (in the long run) a largely impractical solution in my opinion. There are too many miscreants on the net now, and too few sticks, and too little time to beat them all. Automated (software) mechanisms which can totally prevent people from doing stuff to you that you would rather not have done to you are the only viable long term solutions. Unfortunately, we're not totally there yet. Much important work remains to be done. From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 15:09:37 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA00441; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:58:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA00434 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 14:58:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.9.0/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA13841; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:16:49 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:16:48 -0700 (PDT) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour In-Reply-To: <23278.940009221@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > I agree that it would be nice if we could rely on the decency of strangers, > but given that we can't, what's your second choice? The least technical gunk needed to enforce fairly liberal policy, plus ladling on the guilt, of course. Like my Jewish mother taught me. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 15 16:24:42 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA01443; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:10:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA01436 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:10:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (A17-216-27-240.apple.com [17.216.27.240]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA09052 ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:28:13 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 16:29:26 -0700 To: "Roger B.A. Klorese" , "Ronald F. Guilmette" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Idiot of the hour Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:16 PM -0700 10/15/99, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote: > The least technical gunk needed to enforce fairly liberal policy, plus > ladling on the guilt, of course. Like my Jewish mother taught me. combined with a sense of humor and a bit of perspective for seasoning, of course. One reason to be wary of automating stuff like this is that it's so situational. It makes sense to automate stuff that warrants automation -- but no more. I'd rather have too many things in my mailbox to deal with than too few. And false positives are really rather bad things to stuff on your users.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 16 18:53:15 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA17957; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:38:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA17947 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:38:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA02698 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 18:25:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 3370 invoked by uid 50); 16 Oct 1999 01:45:27 -0000 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations References: <19991014234339.A466@ma-1.rootsweb.com> From: Russ Allbery In-Reply-To: Tim Pierce's message of "Thu, 14 Oct 1999 23:43:39 -0400" Date: 15 Oct 1999 18:45:27 -0700 Message-ID: Lines: 20 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.66/Emacs 19.34 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tim Pierce writes: > Folks who use a mail system that supports extended e-mail addresses > could conceivably take advantage of that. For example, with qmail: > To confirm, send mail to widgets-subscribe-09f8bc1d0a@example.com. > With sendmail: > To confirm, send mail to widgets-request+09f8bc1d0a@example.com. > and so on. I'm sure this has been tried, right? Sort of; it's what ezmlm uses, but ezmlm also puts it in the Reply-To header which means it's subject to false positives from autoresponders. Just putting in the body might work better, although I wonder if the address would confuse people. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 16 19:08:02 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA17657; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:35:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA17644 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:35:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailgate.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (nz40.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.197.4]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA17979 for ; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 05:15:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pC19EB640.dip.t-dialin.net (uncu@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de [129.13.197.183]) by mailgate.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de with smtp (Exim 3.02 #2) id 11bNcX-0000PW-00; Wed, 13 Oct 1999 14:35:06 +0200 From: Marc.Haber-lists@gmx.de (Marc Haber) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: full headers of subscription requests to detect abuse (was: Cranfield.ac.uk now blocking mail from encephalon.com) Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:35:56 GMT Organization: posting from University of Karlsruhe, Germany References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:36:18 -0400 (EDT), you wrote: >The freeware version of Listproc will work with Sendmail and >presumably any other standard MTA. It doesn't send full headers >with subscribe requests but it does keep a full-header log of all >command transactions.=20 That could be accomplished with any software by setting appropriate aliases for -request. What bothers me here is that you need list admin cooperation to pursue a force-subscribe attack. In my experience, most force-subscribe attacks are done through lists with clueless admins who either don't ever reply to a request for full headers or don't know what I am talking about. What the world needs these days is software that does include full headers _by_ _default_. Greetings Marc --=20 -------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! = ----- Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im = Header Karlsruhe, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | Fon: *49 721 966 32= 15 Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fax: *49 721 966 31= 29 From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 16 19:23:01 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA17788; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:36:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id SAA17778 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 18:36:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1.voyager.net (mail1.voyager.net [209.153.128.76]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA08966 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 07:03:29 -0700 (PDT) From: jimstyer@voyager.net Received: from LOCALNAME (as1-35.btck.mi.net-link.net [207.89.140.36]) by mail1.voyager.net (8.9.1/Voyager-MailX) with SMTP id KAA08926 for ; Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:27:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:27:52 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.16.19991014102203.4f2f277e@pop.voyager.net> X-Sender: jimstyer@pop.voyager.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:30 PM 10/13/99 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >me to. On some of my lists, soon you'll have no way to subscribe via >email. I expect eventually all will be that way. And so the default >unsub will be via web, as will confirms. I do plan on keeping an >email "panic button" unsubscribe, but you can make it SO simple for >users by going to the web and using embedded links and customized >email and the like... In fact, I'm soon going to modify my "welcome" >message to include a customized link to an unsubscribe web page with >the name pre-encoded..... And what about us "old pharts" who prefer to keep it simple? I do all my personal e-mail work from within Eudora, keep my subscribe and unsubscribe addresses file there, too. I also run my small list (240 subs and growing) completely from Eudora, keep my own backup archives and boilerplate msgs there, too. I find it quite efficient. I prefer not to have to bounce back and forth between Eudora and Netscape. My only use of the Web is a sign-up form on our organizational Web site, but the sign-up requests come to me via basic non-Web e-mail. They also can request sign-up by direct message to me. (NO automated sign-ups, no spam.) An inappropriate sub-wannabe is rare, and doesn't respond to my query for affiliation or interest. All in all, very simple, very clean. Jim Styer, Battle Creek MI, PioNet owner (a list for Michiganders interested in barbershop harmony) --jimstyer@voyager.net-- From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 16 21:05:46 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA19149; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:03:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA19142 for ; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:03:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA27612 ; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:24:46 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19991014102203.4f2f277e@pop.voyager.net> References: <2.2.16.19991014102203.4f2f277e@pop.voyager.net> Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 21:15:38 -0700 To: jimstyer@voyager.net, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:27 AM -0400 10/14/99, jimstyer@voyager.net wrote: > And what about us "old pharts" who prefer to keep it simple? what about people who prefer their black and white TVs? To be honest, you're an increasingly rare breed, compared to the internet users who never even knew there was a time when TV was black adn white only. or perhaps the rotary telephone. both are great examples of things where as technology moved forward, there were attempts to maintain compatibility, but just try to run a modern voice mail or phone tree from a rotary phone. You don't ignore the people who prefer "the old days", but you also don't prevent them from moving technology forward. it's one of those tradeoffs people have to make based on their knowledge of their users. But just try to find a voicemail system or an answer machine that works with a rotary phone today -- you stll have basic service, since the phones still work, but you get less and less access to the modern features. At some point, you have to decide to either "go hermetic" and live in your backwater, or join the rest of us. Asking everyone else to hang back with you won't work -- even if we were listening, we wouldn't. And most folks won't ever hear you... > All in all, very simple, very clean. For you. And to be honest, I know someone who to this day refuses to replace her rotary phone. For her, it's a badge of honor. But nher company now has a voicemail system that requires a modern phone (like one from the last 15 years or so), and it creates problems for her. But she's proud of her stand. Personally, I think it's silly, but more power to her. Just don't expect her to ansewr her voicemail from home. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 17 10:46:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA28090; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 10:24:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA28083 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 10:24:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id MAA08316 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 12:44:45 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id MAA41814 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 12:44:45 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199910171744.MAA41814@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations In-Reply-To: from Russ Allbery at "Oct 15, 1999 06:45:27 pm" Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 12:44:44 -0500 (CDT) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Russ Allbery wrote, | ... it's what ezmlm uses, but ezmlm also puts [the confirmation cookie] in | the Reply-To header which means it's subject to false positives from | autoresponders. And false positives from people who don't read the text and then write back asking, "What the profanity is this profanity?" or yelling, "Stop sending me this profanity!" That confirms them, they are now subscribed, and some of them continue sending similar responses to every post they receive. A couple days ago somebody here posted a method of requiring a response that not only quotes the cookie from the body but also modifies it slightly (add- ing the word "yes" in the right place or something like that). That prevents both automatic responders and automoton responders from being confirmed. | Just putting in the body might work better, although I wonder if the | address would confuse people. The ezmlm-style reply address already confuses people. I belong to a dozen- plus lists on Onelist, which uses a modification of ezmlm (or at least it looks like it to me), and people are always attempting to confirm their de- sires to unsub by thinking that long funny address can't be right, truncating it to the listname and domain, and posting "Yes, thank you, I do want to un- subscribe" to the list. From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 17 14:06:47 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA29964; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:01:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bp.ucs.usl.edu (bp.ucs.usl.edu [130.70.40.36]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA29957 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:01:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from usl.edu (isb9112.usl.edu [130.70.65.242]) by bp.ucs.usl.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1/ucs-server_1.3) with ESMTP id QAA00048; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 16:21:23 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <380A3E08.B7BE61E4@usl.edu> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 16:22:16 -0500 From: Istvan Berkeley Organization: Philosophy, USL X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chuq Von Rospach CC: chuqui@plaidworks.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations References: <2.2.16.19991014102203.4f2f277e@pop.voyager.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi there, Recently, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > what about people who prefer their black and white TVs? > > To be honest, you're an increasingly rare breed, compared to the > internet users who never even knew there was a time when TV was black > adn white only. > It seems to me that there is an important issue that is being overlooked here, namely the issue of backward compatibility. Sure, having access to and using all the latest bells and whistles is fun, but it can also have the effect of excluding users who do not have access to the appropriate technology. Believe it or not, there are still some incredibly antiquated systems out there -- for instance there is one mailer that I know of, which is located at a major US research university which cannot handle 8-bit MIME. One of the problems I face with my list (PHILOSOP) is that the list serves individuals from all over the world (every continent is represented, except Antarctica). Most of the individuals are in academic environments and thus often do not have access to the funds to pay for the latest and greatest computational toys. For this reason, there is a great deal to be said in favour of old fashioned, simple techniques over technological wonder fixes. I think the analogy between the rotary dial phone and a modern PBX may be a little misleading, for this reason. As an example, I had some communication with a subscriber a couple of years ago who was located in one of the states of the former Soviet Union. This subscriber had no www access at all and had his e-mail uploaded and downloaded only once a day, due to the cost of his institution having to make a long distance call to do this. I personally believe that individuals such as these are those most likely to benefit from lists such as PHILOSOP. (PHILOSOP is one of the largest and oldest lists in the world for professional academic philosopher -- most traffic is job notices, conference announcements and requests for particular information). Do other list-owners have similar experiences of 'information have-nots', or is this just a peculiarity of my corner of the net world? All the best, Istvan PHILOSOP Moderator -- Istvan S. N. Berkeley, Ph.D. Philosophy & Cognitive Science E-mail: istvan@usl.edu The University of Louisiana at Lafayette [Formerly, The University of Southwestern Louisiana] P.O. Box 43770 Tel: +1 318 482-6807 Lafayette, LA 70504-3770 Fax: +1 318 482-6195 USA http://www.ucs.usl.edu/~isb9112 From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 17 14:21:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA00131; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:11:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA00124 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:11:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA21428 ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:32:49 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <380A3E08.B7BE61E4@usl.edu> References: <2.2.16.19991014102203.4f2f277e@pop.voyager.net> <380A3E08.B7BE61E4@usl.edu> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:31:45 -0700 To: Istvan Berkeley , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Cc: chuqui@plaidworks.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 4:22 PM -0500 10/17/99, Istvan Berkeley wrote: > It seems to me that there is an important issue that is being overlooked > here, namely the issue of backward compatibility. Not by me. But the number of people who are "email first and email only" is even smaller than those that are lynx-limited in their browsing. It has to be kept in perspective in the larger scheme of things. I worry about compatibility on a daily basis. I design it into my systems to the greatest extent possible. I just don't believe you don't build systems that won't take advantage of modern tools simply because 100% of the users can't (or more often, won't), use them. > Believe it or not, there are still some incredibly antiquated systems > out there -- for instance there is one mailer that I know of, which is > located at a major US research university which cannot handle 8-bit > MIME. Those exist all over the place, especially in Europe. it's one reason why I've been slow in moving towards MIME and 8bit characters. But the affected users are maybe 1/2 of 1% of the user base of my mail lists. Do you avoid giving that other 99% a feature simply because one or two people on a list get left behind? At some point, you have to tell those older installations to join us in the 80's. > Do other list-owners have similar experiences of 'information > have-nots', or is this just a peculiarity of my corner of the net world? nope. They exist. It's a legitimate issue. But it has to be kept in perspective with your entire user base. You don't blow these people away for no good reason, but do you refuse to install that new voicemail system in your company because one in 2,000 callers still uses a rotary phone? Of course not. The benefits far outwieigh the problem. you try to mitigate the issue where you can, but if you wait to install something until 100% of the universe can use it, you still haven't done your first web site, have you? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 17 18:21:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA02215; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 18:11:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from antiochus-fe0.ultra.net (antiochus-fe0.ultra.net [146.115.8.188]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA02208 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 18:11:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from voyager (d225.dial-2.cmb.ma.ultra.net [209.6.65.225]) by antiochus-fe0.ultra.net (8.8.8/ult/n20340/mtc.v2) with SMTP id VAA06693 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:31:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <2.2.32.19991018013155.0073a908@pop.ma.ultranet.com> X-Sender: stanr@pop.ma.ultranet.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:31:55 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Stan Ryckman Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 09:15 PM 10/16/99 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 10:27 AM -0400 10/14/99, jimstyer@voyager.net wrote: > >> And what about us "old pharts" who prefer to keep it simple? > >what about people who prefer their black and white TVs? > >To be honest, you're an increasingly rare breed, compared to the >internet users who never even knew there was a time when TV was black >adn white only. Well, I have a nice color TV. I also have a radio in my car. >both are great examples of things where as technology moved forward, >there were attempts to maintain compatibility, but just try to run a >modern voice mail or phone tree from a rotary phone. But you are saying that we are in the backwater because we don't want to use the color TV remote control to turn off the car radio. Radio and TV are different mediums, just like the web and email are different mediums. Radio and TV have something in common: they use electromagnetic waves to transmit information. The web and email have something in common: they use the Internet to transmit information. >You don't ignore the people who prefer "the old days", but you also >don't prevent them from moving technology forward. it's one of those >tradeoffs people have to make based on their knowledge of their >users. But just try to find a voicemail system or an answer machine >that works with a rotary phone today -- you stll have basic service, >since the phones still work, but you get less and less access to the >modern features. At some point, you have to decide to either "go >hermetic" and live in your backwater, or join the rest of us. Asking >everyone else to hang back with you won't work -- even if we were >listening, we wouldn't. And most folks won't ever hear you... Since you're so convinced that email is "the old days" and shouldn't get in the way of moving technology forward, which you equate to using the web, then I would expect you to convert your email lists-- you don't want to hang back, after all--and just run lists on the web for people to post to and read there. Those do exist, you know. Those of us without T1's in our homes and who prefer to operate offline then won't hear you... Or perhaps I should take the radio out of my car and install a color TV? >What was that? > French horns... No, those are centuries-old technology, far older than black-and-white televisions, radios, or rotary phones... they obviously have no place any more, and anyone who uses a French horn is obviously stuck in the backwater. Cheers, Stan From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 17 19:49:50 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA03047; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 19:45:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA03033 for ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 19:45:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA15846 ; Sun, 17 Oct 1999 20:06:49 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19991018013155.0073a908@pop.ma.ultranet.com> References: <2.2.32.19991018013155.0073a908@pop.ma.ultranet.com> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 20:05:45 -0700 To: Stan Ryckman , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:31 PM -0400 10/17/99, Stan Ryckman wrote: > At 09:15 PM 10/16/99 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > But you are saying that we are in the backwater because we don't > want to use the color TV remote control to turn off the car radio. um, only if you're claiming the world wide web is a remote control in your eyes. I doubt most people would agree with you. It's not a case of the car radio and TV remove, but the car radio and the TV. > Radio and TV are different mediums, just like the web and email are > different mediums. Oh, but they aren't. web and email are both transmission disciplines of a single information stream. > Since you're so convinced that email is "the old days" and shouldn't > get in the way of moving technology forward, which you equate to > using the web, then I would expect you to convert your email lists-- > you don't want to hang back, Nope. You made a basic bad assumption. Email isn't "the old days". Email-ONLY is. > after all--and just run lists on the > web for people to post to and read there. Those do exist, you know. I use those, too, where they're appropriate. > Or perhaps I should take the radio out of my car and install > a color TV? people are doing that, too. I know someone who plays his nintendo on the way to work in traffic stoppages. Just because email came first doesn't mean it needs to be kept separate. You use technologies for what they're good at, not what they're traditionally used for. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 18 08:09:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA12489; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 07:59:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sunu450.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (sunu450.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de [134.147.222.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id HAA12480 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 07:59:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 20011 invoked from network); 18 Oct 1999 15:19:32 -0000 Received: from thhe2.spomed.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (HELO ruhr-uni-bochum.de) (134.147.124.77) by mailhost.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de with SMTP; 18 Oct 1999 15:19:32 -0000 Message-ID: <380B3A84.A3E3688@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:19:32 +0200 From: Michael Brach X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [de] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Local alias problem References: <199910180800.BAA05792@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello list managers, emails (e.g. TO: user@anywhere) are often locally forwarded to alias adresses, (e.g. firstname.lastname@anywhere). This causes problems, when a user wants to contribute to a private list and the subscribed adress is not equal to the sender adress. How can I handle this situation? Is this a subject to list configuration or policy? I want to avoid contacting the single user, for most of them don't know about internal aliases. I do manage two lists (with Majordomo and Listserv), but I am not a programmer. Thank you very much in advance. Michael Brach From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 18 10:55:10 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA14466; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:37:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA14454 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:37:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from yaz.hyperreal.org (pez.hyperreal.org [207.181.224.6]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA16160 for ; Sat, 16 Oct 1999 16:19:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 1986 invoked by uid 1000); 16 Oct 1999 23:39:05 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 16 Oct 1999 23:39:05 -0000 Date: Sat, 16 Oct 1999 16:39:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Brian Behlendorf To: Tim Pierce cc: Russ Allbery , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: spammers and list confirmations In-Reply-To: <19991014234339.A466@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, Tim Pierce wrote: > Folks who use a mail system that supports extended e-mail addresses > could conceivably take advantage of that. For example, with qmail: > > To confirm, send mail to widgets-subscribe-09f8bc1d0a@example.com. > > With sendmail: > > To confirm, send mail to widgets-request+09f8bc1d0a@example.com. > > and so on. I'm sure this has been tried, right? This is how ezmlm has always done it. Brian From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 18 11:09:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA14754; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:58:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from panix.com (panix.com [166.84.0.226]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA14747 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:57:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dfl@localhost) by panix.com (8.8.5/8.8.8/PanixU1.4) id OAA24992; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:18:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Danny Lieberman Message-Id: <199910181818.OAA24992@panix.com> Subject: Re: Local alias problem To: michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de (Michael Brach) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:18:03 -0400 (EDT) Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com (List Managers) In-Reply-To: <380B3A84.A3E3688@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> from "Michael Brach" at Oct 18, 99 05:19:32 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Michael, I have an explicit policy on my list that says "you must post from your subscribed address", period. No exceptions, and no double subscribing, either. For the most part it works fine. Every so often a post will kick out and I will write a nice letter to the offending poster explaining the policy and they usually get it. Those that dont are usually lurkers. -- Danny Lieberman dfl@panix.com From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 18 13:55:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA16592; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:45:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA16585 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:45:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id OAA27261; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:05:22 -0700 (PDT) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:05:22 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910182105.OAA27261@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de CC: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: <380B3A84.A3E3688@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> (message from Michael Brach on Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:19:32 +0200) Subject: Re: Local alias problem Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk This issue comes up for me all the time too. My policy is people can recieve posts to any address they want (helps for sorting for many or has other logistical advantages to choose). And people can post from any address they want. Some people like to post anon with a free email account. This is fine. Some people have the forwarding problem. Some people just have more than one account. Some people have email problems and need a backup account to post from. The software I use (Bestserv...we have to use it; it's watered down majordomo) has an "alias" subscription option. It means you count as a subscriber for posting purposes (only subscribers can post) but you won't recieve posts at that address. Listserv has this option too; it's called NO MAIL. They can subscribe and then set it to NO MAIL so they are in the subscription database but won't recieve posts there. I'm sure Majordomo has a similar option. Users subscribe on their own and if they have trouble posting (and can't figure out the alias problem from my help pages) they tell me. I then tell them how to set up an alias (I have a cheat sheet for all the list commands). I think most users do get forwarding once you explain it to them. I mean just show them the mail you got from them and what address it came from. This is different from the address they give out to others. Not too hard...though I know it's easy to overestimate user's abilities :-) Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.consultclarity.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 18 14:40:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA16954; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:19:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA16947 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:19:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id QAA01824 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:40:14 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id QAA55625 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:40:13 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199910182140.QAA55625@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: posting from subscribed address (was local alias problem) In-Reply-To: <199910181818.OAA24992@panix.com> from Danny Lieberman at "Oct 18, 1999 02:18:03 pm" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:40:13 -0500 (CDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Danny Lieberman wrote, | I have an explicit policy on my list that says "you must post from | your subscribed address", period. No exceptions, and no double | subscribing, either. For the most part it works fine. Every so | often a post will kick out and I will write a nice letter to the | offending poster explaining the policy and they usually get it. That's draconian. For your list, Danny, it may be necessary or even ideal, but for most that I've been on, it's severe. That's why some packages sup- port a roster of non-subscribed addresses with posting rights. I moderate my list, so it's no problem for me to keep records of members' alternate addresses. All somebody has to do is write to me once from the subscribed address to say, "foo@bar.baz is I" and after that I'll accept posts from there as well, if of course the post is otherwise acceptable. But what I'd really like to know is why you forbid double subscribing. It seems to me that that can't hurt, so what are the particulars of your list that make double subscribing a bad thing there? From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 18 16:36:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA18246; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:27:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA18239 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:27:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 6603 invoked by uid 100); 18 Oct 1999 19:44:13 -0400 Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 19:44:13 -0400 (EDT) From: John R Levine To: Michael Brach cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Local alias problem In-Reply-To: <380B3A84.A3E3688@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > emails (e.g. TO: user@anywhere) are often locally forwarded to alias > adresses, (e.g. firstname.lastname@anywhere). This causes problems, when > a user wants to contribute to a private list and the subscribed adress > is not equal to the sender adress. I have this problem all the time, particularly with people on big corporate networks where the incoming address is something like fred.smith@bigcorp.com and the outgoing address is fsmith@mail14.atlantis.bigcorp.com. For my Majordomo lists, I make a parallel pseudo-list called -extra to which people can subscribe their write-only addresses. It's not a real list, mail to -extra is rejected, it's just added to the list of files that majordomo uses to validate mail to the real list (just as subscribers to -digest can post to listname.) This is very easy to do with majordomo, and requires no code changes, just one line in the list config file. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 19 00:52:33 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA23086; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 00:43:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA23079 for ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 00:42:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id KAA00473 ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:03:23 +0200 (MEST) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:aumont@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id KAA31141 ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:03:23 +0200 Message-Id: <199910190803.KAA31141@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 To: Michael Brach Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: Local alias problem In-reply-to: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:19:32 +0200. <380B3A84.A3E3688@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 10:03:23 +0200 From: Aumont - Comite Reseaux des Universites Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Hello list managers, > > emails (e.g. TO: user@anywhere) are often locally forwarded to alias > adresses, (e.g. firstname.lastname@anywhere). This causes problems, when > a user wants to contribute to a private list and the subscribed adress > is not equal to the sender adress. Sympa provide per user reception options. One of them is 'nomail' it is used to have multiple subscribtion but unique message reception. In addition a liste can be configured to distribute all messages from subscribers and forward others to the list editor. Serge Aumont From list-managers-owner Tue Oct 19 20:32:39 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA07790; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:13:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from unix1.sihope.com (unix1.sihope.com [209.98.16.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA07783 for ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:13:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from DSL1123 (dsl-1-123.sihope.com [209.98.133.30]) by unix1.sihope.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id WAA12317; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:33:49 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <02e301bf1aab$6c5b0f20$1e8562d1@sihope.com> From: "Andrew P. Tasi" To: , Cc: References: <199910081603.MAA95225@snake.npac.syr.edu> Subject: Re: Lists, news, and searching Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 22:30:03 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ----- Original Message ----- From: David E. Bernholdt Sent: Friday, October 08, 1999 11:03 AM Subject: Lists, news, and searching > I run some mailing lists. I am thinking about providing (a) usenet > version of the lists, and (b) a fully searchable archive of the lists. Sorry I'm behind on my mail... I use http://www.listquest.com/ as one means of providing search abilities. It won't do the usenet piece, but IMO it's worth a look as a secondary search tool. Especially nice is that it really required now effort on my part, and was setup by listquest within 3 or 4 hours of initial contact. Regards, Andrew P. Tasi From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 20 23:04:20 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA25064; Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:51:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id WAA25052 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:51:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA18316 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:35:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA24656; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:55:15 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:55:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Cyndi Norman cc: michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Local alias problem In-Reply-To: <199910182105.OAA27261@shell7.ba.best.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Cyndi Norman wrote: > Listserv has this option too; it's called NO MAIL. They can subscribe and > then set it to NO MAIL so they are in the subscription database but won't > recieve posts there. I'm sure Majordomo has a similar option. Listproc, the clone-implementation of Listserv, also has the NOMAIL flag. Listar has this functionality as well, as does Mailman (and I think Sympa and Lyris do as well). In fact, Majordomo is - as far as I know - the only package that does NOT provide for this functionality in some way, though I know a few people who have patched their own copies to give it this functionality. (Usually requiring admin intervention, unfortunately.) From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 20 23:19:26 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA25049; Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:51:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id WAA25037 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:51:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA17885 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:56:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id TAA32324; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 19:16:28 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991018185646.05ad9880@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 18:56:46 -0400 To: Danny Lieberman From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: Local alias problem Cc: michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de (Michael Brach), list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) In-Reply-To: <199910181818.OAA24992@panix.com> References: <380B3A84.A3E3688@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Using Majordomo, I maintain lists in triplets. There is an X list, an X-digest, and an X-posting list. The X-posting list is used for extra posting addresses like this. If I approve a bounce from an unsubscribed address, I generally force them onto the X-posting list. Generally, they are posting from a new address because their address has changed and their old address is being forwarded. The average user frankly does not know when their ISP changes their mailing address. This procedure means that I need only do this once per new address. I also have a majordomo extension that allows people to move between the lists without going through the confirmation dialog, that is, I support a "set mail", "set nomail" and "set digest" for the lists. This simply unsubscribes and subscribes people to different lists in the triplet. The X-posting never has any mail set to it other than the announce. However, if the announce bounces, I will unsub the user from the X-posting list. I do insist that they use real addresses. Very few announces bounce. This is explained at http://cowboywww.squawk.com/majordomo.faq.html What happens when they try to unsub? If they kept the instructions, it will tell them how to submit an unsub that simply needs to be approved. There is also a web interface that they can use on behalf of any address that they can still get e-mail at. Oh, yes, an unsub from the main list will try the digest list if they are not on the main list. This fix eliminated at least one confused user e-mail per month, even though there are instructions in every footer. How often does this happen? Several times a day, on all the lists I run, and the approve-and-subscribe is a keystroke that runs a script. At 02:18 PM 10/18/99 -0400, Danny Lieberman wrote: > >Michael, > >I have an explicit policy on my list that says "you must post from >your subscribed address", period. No exceptions, and no double >subscribing, either. For the most part it works fine. Every so >often a post will kick out and I will write a nice letter to the >offending poster explaining the policy and they usually get it. > >Those that dont are usually lurkers. > >-- > >Danny Lieberman >dfl@panix.com > -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 21 00:34:12 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA26114; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 00:19:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sunu450.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (sunu450.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de [134.147.222.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id AAA26107 for ; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 00:19:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 25551 invoked from network); 21 Oct 1999 07:40:28 -0000 Received: from thhe2.spomed.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (HELO ruhr-uni-bochum.de) (134.147.124.77) by mailhost.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de with SMTP; 21 Oct 1999 07:40:28 -0000 Message-ID: <380EC36C.6B6A833E@ruhr-uni-bochum.de> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:40:28 +0200 From: Michael Brach X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [de] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de Subject: Re: Local alias problem References: <199910190800.BAA23397@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Thank you for your replies! SUMMARY Problem: > Subject: Local alias problem > emails (e.g. TO: user@anywhere) are often locally forwarded to alias > adresses, (e.g. firstname.lastname@anywhere). This causes problems, when > a user wants to contribute to a private list and the subscribed adress > is not equal to the sender adress. > > How can I handle this situation? Is this a subject to list configuration > or policy? I want to avoid contacting the single user, for most of them > don't know about internal aliases. I do manage two lists (with Majordomo > and Listserv), but I am not a programmer. Handling: A. "you must post from your subscribed address"-policy (1)(2) B. multiple subscriptions for the same person; all but one are set to NOMAIL (3)(4)(7) C. As B., but majordomo-managers have to help themselves, for there is no NOMAIL option (5) (6) Replies: (1) > I have an explicit policy on my list that says "you must post from > your subscribed address", period. No exceptions, and no double > subscribing, either. For the most part it works fine. Every so > often a post will kick out and I will write a nice letter to the > offending poster explaining the policy and they usually get it. > > Those that dont are usually lurkers. (2) > > | I have an explicit policy on my list that says "you must post from > | your subscribed address", period. No exceptions, and no double > | subscribing, either. For the most part it works fine. Every so > | often a post will kick out and I will write a nice letter to the > | offending poster explaining the policy and they usually get it. > > That's draconian. For your list, Danny, it may be necessary or even ideal, > but for most that I've been on, it's severe. That's why some packages sup- > port a roster of non-subscribed addresses with posting rights. > > I moderate my list, so it's no problem for me to keep records of members' > alternate addresses. All somebody has to do is write to me once from the > subscribed address to say, "foo@bar.baz is I" and after that I'll accept > posts from there as well, if of course the post is otherwise acceptable. > > But what I'd really like to know is why you forbid double subscribing. It > seems to me that that can't hurt, so what are the particulars of your list > that make double subscribing a bad thing there? > (3) > My policy is people can recieve posts to any address they want (helps for > sorting for many or has other logistical advantages to choose). > > And people can post from any address they want. Some people like to post > anon with a free email account. This is fine. Some people have the > forwarding problem. Some people just have more than one account. Some > people have email problems and need a backup account to post from. > > The software I use (Bestserv...we have to use it; it's watered down > majordomo) has an "alias" subscription option. It means you count as a > subscriber for posting purposes (only subscribers can post) but you won't > recieve posts at that address. > > Listserv has this option too; it's called NO MAIL. They can subscribe and > then set it to NO MAIL so they are in the subscription database but won't > recieve posts there. I'm sure Majordomo has a similar option. > > Users subscribe on their own and if they have trouble posting (and can't > figure out the alias problem from my help pages) they tell me. I then tell > them how to set up an alias (I have a cheat sheet for all the list > commands). > > I think most users do get forwarding once you explain it to them. I mean > just show them the mail you got from them and what address it came from. > This is different from the address they give out to others. Not too > hard...though I know it's easy to overestimate user's abilities :-) > (4) > Sympa provide per user reception options. One of them is 'nomail' it > is used to have multiple subscribtion but unique message reception. > > In addition a liste can be configured to distribute all messages from > subscribers and forward others to the list editor. > (5) > I have this problem all the time, particularly with people on big corporate > networks where the incoming address is something like fred.smith@bigcorp.com > and the outgoing address is fsmith@mail14.atlantis.bigcorp.com. > > For my Majordomo lists, I make a parallel pseudo-list called -extra > to which people can subscribe their write-only addresses. It's not a real > list, mail to -extra is rejected, it's just added to the list of > files that majordomo uses to validate mail to the real list (just as > subscribers to -digest can post to listname.) > > This is very easy to do with majordomo, and requires no code changes, > just one line in the list config file. > (6) Using Majordomo, I maintain lists in triplets. There is an X list, an X-digest, and an X-posting list. The X-posting list is used for extra posting addresses like this. If I approve a bounce from an unsubscribed address, I generally force them onto the X-posting list. Generally, they are posting from a new address because their address has changed and their old address is being forwarded. The average user frankly does not know when their ISP changes their mailing address. This procedure means that I need only do this once per new address. I also have a majordomo extension that allows people to move between the lists without going through the confirmation dialog, that is, I support a "set mail", "set nomail" and "set digest" for the lists. This simply unsubscribes and subscribes people to different lists in the triplet. The X-posting never has any mail set to it other than the announce. However, if the announce bounces, I will unsub the user from the X-posting list. I do insist that they use real addresses. Very few announces bounce. This is explained at http://cowboywww.squawk.com/majordomo.faq.html What happens when they try to unsub? If they kept the instructions, it will tell them how to submit an unsub that simply needs to be approved. There is also a web interface that they can use on behalf of any address that they can still get e-mail at. Oh, yes, an unsub from the main list will try the digest list if they are not on the main list. This fix eliminated at least one confused user e-mail per month, even though there are instructions in every footer. How often does this happen? Several times a day, on all the lists I run, and the approve-and-subscribe is a keystroke that runs a script. (7) Listproc, the clone-implementation of Listserv, also has the NOMAIL flag. Listar has this functionality as well, as does Mailman (and I think Sympa and Lyris do as well). In fact, Majordomo is - as far as I know - the only package that does NOT provide for this functionality in some way, though I know a few people who have patched their own copies to give it this functionality. (Usually requiring admin intervention, unfortunately.) -- ____________________________________________________________ Michael Brach Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum Lehrstuhl für Sportmedizin (Prof. H. Heck) D-44780 Bochum GERMANY Tel. +49-234-322-3112 oder -4099 Fax. +49-234-321-4323 email: michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de _____________________________________________________________ From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 21 08:51:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA04075; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 08:41:56 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA04068 for ; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 08:41:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost.value.net [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA17945 for ; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:03:09 -0700 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: demime From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:03:09 -0700 Message-ID: <17943.940521789@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Would someone please remind me where I could obtain a copy of the `demime' utility that's been discussed here? From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 21 11:21:48 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA06043; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:06:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA06036 for ; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:06:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom14.netcom.com [199.183.9.114]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id LAA02885; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:27:08 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991021110810.0095fe60@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:08:10 -0700 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" From: SRE Subject: Re: demime Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <17943.940521789@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 09:03 AM 10/21/99 -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >Would someone please remind me where I could obtain a copy of the >`demime' utility that's been discussed here? http://scifi.squawk.com/demime.html as of 6/99 From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 21 11:36:49 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA06163; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:15:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA06149 for ; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:15:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA01628; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:36:23 -0700 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 11:36:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Blackman To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: demime In-Reply-To: <17943.940521789@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 21 Oct 1999, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > Would someone please remind me where I could obtain a copy of the > `demime' utility that's been discussed here? Not sure about DeMIME, but I hacked together a customizable MIME filtering (and HTML decoding) tool by ripping Listar's MIME and HTML routines out and making them standalone. That can be picked up from ftp://ftp.listar.org/pub/listar/other/norm-0.1.tar.gz Takes a mail on stdin, outputs the mail as a content/text single body on the other side. Easily customizable, so you could add handlers to, say, take a VCard and decode the info, placing it in the message body or whatever. From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 22 11:07:28 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA23499; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:53:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from FSM-1.PICA.ARMY.MIL (fsm-1.pica.army.mil [129.139.96.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA23468 for ; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:53:01 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 99 14:15:45 EDT From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: bigfoot.com Message-ID: <9910221415.aa25772@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Anyone else seeing bigfoot.com drop off the net? I've got undeliverable mail due to timeout failures on 3 lists at 2 different sites for them... Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer http://labview.pica.army.mil/ From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 22 11:20:29 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA23444; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:52:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id KAA23436 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 10:52:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA05141 for ; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:22:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA48363; Thu, 21 Oct 1999 13:38:49 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 13:38:49 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Jeremy Blackman Cc: Cyndi Norman , michael.brach@ruhr-uni-bochum.de, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Local alias problem Message-ID: <19991021133849.A45382@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199910182105.OAA27261@shell7.ba.best.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Oct 18, 1999 at 04:55:14PM -0700, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Cyndi Norman wrote: > > > Listserv has this option too; it's called NO MAIL. They can subscribe and > > then set it to NO MAIL so they are in the subscription database but won't > > recieve posts there. I'm sure Majordomo has a similar option. > > Listproc, the clone-implementation of Listserv, also has the NOMAIL flag. > > Listar has this functionality as well, as does Mailman (and I think > Sympa and Lyris do as well). > > In fact, Majordomo is - as far as I know - the only package that does NOT > provide for this functionality in some way, ... SmartList doesn't have a NOMAIL concept. Either you're on the list and are receiving mail, or you're off it and you're not. We have never really felt the loss. NOMAIL is not very relevant if the list doesn't support per-subscriber options (i.e. no state to remember). About all it's good for is to make manual subscriptions easier, and there are other ways around that. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Fri Oct 22 18:21:03 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA28146; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:14:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from unix1.sihope.com (unix1.sihope.com [209.98.16.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA28139 for ; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 18:14:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from DSL1123 (dsl-1-123.sihope.com [209.98.133.30]) by unix1.sihope.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id UAA11594; Fri, 22 Oct 1999 20:35:46 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <03db01bf1cf6$71953680$1e8562d1@sihope.com> From: "Andrew P. Tasi" To: "Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer" , References: <9910221415.aa25772@fsm-1.fsm-1.pica.army.mil> Subject: Re: bigfoot.com Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 20:32:16 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Yup. They appear to be having problems. ----- Original Message ----- From: Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer To: Sent: Friday, October 22, 1999 1:15 PM Subject: bigfoot.com > Anyone else seeing bigfoot.com drop off the net? I've got undeliverable mail > due to timeout failures on 3 lists at 2 different sites for them... > > Tom Coradeschi, Info-LabVIEW List Maintainer > > http://labview.pica.army.mil/ > From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 23 14:35:35 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA10163; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:22:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp8.teleport.com (smtp8.teleport.com [192.108.254.52]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id OAA10156 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:22:27 -0700 (PDT) From: byronl@teleport.com Received: (qmail 10121 invoked from network); 23 Oct 1999 21:43:39 -0000 Received: from user2.teleport.com (qmailr@192.108.254.12) by smtp8.teleport.com with SMTP; 23 Oct 1999 21:43:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 27487 invoked by uid 321); 23 Oct 1999 21:43:38 -0000 Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:43:38 -0700 (PDT) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: AOL silently dropping mail again? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Is anyone else seeing reports of AOL silently dropping mail? We run a mail server with over 100 lists, and we've started to get some complaints from AOL subscribers that they are not getting list mail. I checked our maillogs and they show messages *are* being accepted for those same AOL addresses. So, I sent a message from the server to my own AOL account - our logs show it successfully delivered to AOL, but it never showed up in my mailbox there! (I have no AOL mail controls set.) When I send mail from another server, it is delivered immediately, so it seems the problem is with this one server only. But there is no indication of a problem. Mail is accepted, it's just apparently ignored. Anyone else seeing a similar problem? From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 23 19:35:34 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA12415; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 19:33:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA12408 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 19:33:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost.value.net [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA26640; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 19:55:47 -0700 To: byronl@teleport.com cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:43:38 -0700. From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 19:55:47 -0700 Message-ID: <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , you w rote: >Is anyone else seeing reports of AOL silently dropping mail? > >We run a mail server with over 100 lists, and we've started to get some >complaints from AOL subscribers that they are not getting list mail. I >checked our maillogs and they show messages *are* being accepted for those >same AOL addresses. So, I sent a message from the server to my own AOL >account - our logs show it successfully delivered to AOL, but it never >showed up in my mailbox there! (I have no AOL mail controls set.) > >When I send mail from another server, it is delivered immediately, so it >seems the problem is with this one server only. But there is no >indication of a problem. Mail is accepted, it's just apparently ignored. > >Anyone else seeing a similar problem? It is a somewhat well known fact that if AOL identifies a given piece of incoming mail as being probable spam, they'll accept it and then just quietly route it to /dev/null with no bounce. (According to them, they save a lot of bandwidth and processing power by simply dev/null'ing spam, rather than trying to bounce it.) From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 23 20:49:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA12788; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 20:35:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail.xnet.com (quake.xnet.com [198.147.221.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA12777 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 20:35:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from typhoon.xnet.com (typhoon.xnet.com [198.147.221.66]) by mail.xnet.com (8.9.3+Sun/XNet-3.0R) with SMTP id WAA13855; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 22:56:04 -0500 (CDT) Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 22:56:04 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199910240356.WAA13855@mail.xnet.com> From: Adam Bailey To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Organization: Paranoid net.fascists, Anonymous In-Reply-To: References: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 10/23/99 4:43 PM, byronl@teleport.com wrote... > Is anyone else seeing reports of AOL silently dropping mail? > > We run a mail server with over 100 lists, and we've started to get some > complaints from AOL subscribers that they are not getting list mail. I > checked our maillogs and they show messages *are* being accepted for those > same AOL addresses. So, I sent a message from the server to my own AOL > account - our logs show it successfully delivered to AOL, but it never > showed up in my mailbox there! (I have no AOL mail controls set.) There's no "again" involved. AOL does this. AOL has been doing this. AOL will probably continue to do this. Look at your headers, it shouldn't be too hard to spot the problem. Look for bad DNS or syntax errors. -- Adam Bailey | Chicago, Illinois adamb@lull.org | Finger/Web for PGP adamkb@aol.com | http://www.lull.org/adam/ From list-managers-owner Sat Oct 23 21:49:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA13235; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 21:46:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA13228 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 21:46:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA09984; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 01:07:30 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 01:07:30 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: byronl@teleport.com Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Message-ID: <19991024010730.B5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, Oct 23, 1999 at 07:55:47PM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > It is a somewhat well known fact that if AOL identifies a given piece > of incoming mail as being probable spam, they'll accept it and then > just quietly route it to /dev/null with no bounce. > > (According to them, they save a lot of bandwidth and processing power > by simply dev/null'ing spam, rather than trying to bounce it.) Yup. If we try to bounce a spam, it just generates a double-bounce to postmaster. Dropping it on the floor saves us a lot of hassle. Naturally, we don't want to do that unless we're about 100% sure that it's spam. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 24 17:23:45 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA24584; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:14:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA24577 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:14:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id UAA17956; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:36:08 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:36:08 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: byronl@teleport.com Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Message-ID: <19991024203608.C5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> <19991024010730.B5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <19991024010730.B5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Oct 24, 1999 at 01:07:30AM -0400, Tim Pierce wrote: > On Sat, Oct 23, 1999 at 07:55:47PM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > > > It is a somewhat well known fact that if AOL identifies a given piece > > of incoming mail as being probable spam, they'll accept it and then > > just quietly route it to /dev/null with no bounce. > > > > (According to them, they save a lot of bandwidth and processing power > > by simply dev/null'ing spam, rather than trying to bounce it.) > > Yup. If we try to bounce a spam, it just generates a double-bounce Bad wording on my part. I do not work for or speak for AOL. I was just confirming that our experience with bouncing or dropping spam is consistent with that (rumored) reasoning. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 24 17:38:09 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA24689; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:28:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from netcom11.netcom.com (netcom11.netcom.com [199.183.9.111]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA24682 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:28:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@localhost.netcom.com [127.0.0.1]) by netcom11.netcom.com (8.8.5-r-beta/8.8.5/(NETCOM v1.02)) with SMTP id RAA07446; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:48:57 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991024170533.00989a00@10.0.2.2> X-Sender: eckert@10.0.2.2 (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 17:05:33 -0700 To: Tim Pierce From: SRE Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: <19991024010730.B5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 01:07 AM 10/24/99 -0400, Tim Pierce wrote: >Dropping it on the floor saves us a lot of hassle. >Naturally, we don't want to do that unless we're about 100% sure that >it's spam. I've exchanged email with several list owners who had to change hosts because AOL decided that all email from a given domain was spam. They're not very selective, and they don't tell anyone which domains they're black-holing. From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 24 19:36:52 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA25511; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:20:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from scifi.squawk.com (scifi.squawk.com [208.143.206.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA25498 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 19:20:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tpad.squawk.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by scifi.squawk.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id WAA24504 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 22:41:52 -0400 Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19991024224011.033c15c0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: njs@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 22:40:11 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Nick Simicich Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19991024170533.00989a00@10.0.2.2> References: <19991024010730.B5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> <26638.940733747@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 05:05 PM 10/24/99 -0700, SRE wrote: >At 01:07 AM 10/24/99 -0400, Tim Pierce wrote: >>Dropping it on the floor saves us a lot of hassle. >>Naturally, we don't want to do that unless we're about 100% sure that >>it's spam. > >I've exchanged email with several list owners who had to change >hosts because AOL decided that all email from a given domain was >spam. They're not very selective, and they don't tell anyone which >domains they're black-holing. And they are totally unresponsive to any inquiries from any other postmasters, no matter how they are made, (well, I have not found the magic formula yet). -- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. That which does kill us makes us smell stronger, after a few days, anyway. Nick Simicich mailto:njs@scifi.squawk.com or (last choice) mailto:njs@us.ibm.com http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World! From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 24 20:50:29 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA26097; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:36:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA26090 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:36:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eskimo.com (eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA22583; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:57:53 -0700 From: Berg Received: (from berg@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) id UAA01790; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:57:53 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 20:57:53 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199910250357.UAA01790@eskimo.com> To: njs@scifi.squawk.com Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk njs@scifi.squawk.com wrote: > And they are totally unresponsive to any inquiries from any other > postmasters, no matter how they are made, (well, I have not found the > magic formula yet). I wonder how they'd react if someone did it to them...:P From list-managers-owner Sun Oct 24 22:05:30 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA26726; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 21:55:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA26719 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 21:55:48 -0700 (PDT) Received: from (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA15902 ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 22:18:29 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <199910250357.UAA01790@eskimo.com> References: <199910250357.UAA01790@eskimo.com> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 22:16:13 -0700 To: Berg , njs@scifi.squawk.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 8:57 PM -0700 10/24/99, Berg wrote: > I wonder how they'd react if someone did it to them...:P you'd have to actually be big enough for them to notice first. (shrug). I have a huge subscriber base on my lists at AOL. And funny, but I don't seem to have these problems. And AOL's postmasters have a pretty good record of responding to my notes. Must be because I don't scream and bluster or something. or maybe they just like me. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) What was that? French horns... From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 25 00:20:31 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA28247; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:11:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tor-srs1.netcom.ca (tor-srs1.netcom.ca [207.93.1.148]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA28240 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:11:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sharon-p133 (ott-on1-24.netcom.ca [207.181.90.88]) by tor-srs1.netcom.ca (8.8.7-s-4/8.8.7) with SMTP id DAA04599 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:32:41 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199910250732.DAA04599@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Sender: sharon@pop.listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:31:39 -0400 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sharon Tucci Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? In-Reply-To: References: <199910250357.UAA01790@eskimo.com> <199910250357.UAA01790@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >(shrug). I have a huge subscriber base on my lists at AOL. And funny, >but I don't seem to have these problems. And AOL's postmasters have a >pretty good record of responding to my notes. Must be because I don't >scream and bluster or something. or maybe they just like me. Funny that this was mentioned now... we never had a persistent problem with AOL before. But for the past two weeks, just ONE of our hosted lists is continuing to report problems. The listowner himself has a couple of AOL addresses subscribed - one always gets list messages and the other hasn't since the problem started. I don't know if the problem we and Byron (two separate co's) are having are related to AOL blocking either of our domains. If they were, logically wouldn't this mean that NO email would be getting through? This isn't the case, however, as I mentioned, and with the one list that is resulting in problems, it's the same people missing list messages consistently. Sharon Tucci From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 25 00:35:36 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA28492; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:32:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA28485 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 00:32:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA21354; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:53:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:53:07 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Berg , njs@scifi.squawk.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Message-ID: <19991025035307.F5980@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199910250357.UAA01790@eskimo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Oct 24, 1999 at 10:16:13PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 8:57 PM -0700 10/24/99, Berg wrote: > > > I wonder how they'd react if someone did it to them...:P > > you'd have to actually be big enough for them to notice first. > > (shrug). I have a huge subscriber base on my lists at AOL. And funny, > but I don't seem to have these problems. We just passed 100,000 AOL subscribers on our lists. I am frankly surprised that AOL has not decided that we're spammers due to the sheer volume of mail we're sending them. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 25 03:35:44 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA03164; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:28:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from arthur.monkman.org (cpu1787.adsl.bellglobal.com [206.47.37.18]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id DAA03157 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 03:28:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: id GAA04870; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 06:48:45 -0400 Received: by gateway id GAA23343 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 06:47:46 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from brian@monkman.org) Message-Id: <199910251047.GAA23343@monkman.org> From: "Brian Monkman" To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 06:48:43 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Reply-to: brian@monkman.org In-reply-to: <3.0.5.32.19991024224011.033c15c0@127.0.0.1> References: <3.0.5.32.19991024170533.00989a00@10.0.2.2> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 24 Oct 99, at 22:40, Nick Simicich wrote: > And they are totally unresponsive to any inquiries from any other > postmasters, no matter how they are made, (well, I have not found the > magic formula yet). That isn't entirely true. I was having the dropping mail problem with my AOL subscribers and I found that I, eventually, got in touch with someone at AOL that was quite helpful. It took me a couple of weeks and the help of the 10 members of my list the are AOL subscribers. And before anyone asks what the problem was - it just seemed to magically go away the day after I actually got in touch with someone at AOL. Hmmm........ --- Brian Monkman - Nepean, Ontario brian@monkman.org http://www.monkman.org People are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russell From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 25 06:36:58 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA04535; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 06:24:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Kitten.mcs.com (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA04526 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 06:24:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.com (8.8.7/8.8.2) with ESMTP id IAA02726 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:46:08 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id IAA02569 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:46:08 -0500 (CDT) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <199910251346.IAA02569@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? In-Reply-To: <199910250732.DAA04599@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> from Sharon Tucci at "Oct 25, 1999 03:31:39 am" Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:46:08 -0500 (CDT) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Sharon Tucci wrote, | Funny that this was mentioned now... we never had a persistent problem | with AOL before. But for the past two weeks, just ONE of our hosted | lists is continuing to report problems. The listowner himself | has a couple of AOL addresses subscribed - one always gets list | messages and the other hasn't since the problem started. I'm having a similar problem with WebTV. I had six subscribers there when they decided to accuse the list's host of running an open relay, and I asked the six if they had other addresses. Two gave me webmail addresses; one unsubbed; three did not respond. Of the remaining three, I had to drop two as unreachable, yet the third one's copies of list mail do not bounce. I'd guess that that person's WebTV mail is located on a server that either ac- cepts the list or drops it silently. From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 25 09:06:04 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA05900; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:57:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA05893 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:57:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA24147; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 12:18:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 12:18:59 -0400 From: Tim Pierce To: "David W. Tamkin" Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Message-ID: <19991025121859.A24060@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <199910250732.DAA04599@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> <199910251346.IAA02569@Mars.mcs.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <199910251346.IAA02569@Mars.mcs.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Mon, Oct 25, 1999 at 08:46:08AM -0500, David W. Tamkin wrote: > Sharon Tucci wrote, > > | Funny that this was mentioned now... we never had a persistent problem > | with AOL before. But for the past two weeks, just ONE of our hosted > | lists is continuing to report problems. The listowner himself > | has a couple of AOL addresses subscribed - one always gets list > | messages and the other hasn't since the problem started. > > I'm having a similar problem with WebTV. I had six subscribers there when > they decided to accuse the list's host of running an open relay, and I asked > the six if they had other addresses. Two gave me webmail addresses; one > unsubbed; three did not respond. We have actually had good experiences with WebTV after an initial stumble. Some time ago they blocked us for sending them spam (chiefly listowners who were getting bounces from spammers who were trying to post to closed lists), and they bounced all our mail for about a day. We managed to get the word out to the subscribers, who raised bloody hell, and now we're on WebTV's whitehat list. Some of the more clueless on WebTV periodically bitch to them about spam that "we" are sending them, but when it happens I just get a note from WebTV forwarding the complaint from the user and reminding me that because we're one of their "white hat" sites, they won't take any action. It seems pretty professional to me. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Mon Oct 25 19:05:30 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA11525; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:53:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp8.teleport.com (smtp8.teleport.com [192.108.254.52]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id SAA11518 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 18:53:16 -0700 (PDT) From: byronl@teleport.com Received: (qmail 1415 invoked from network); 26 Oct 1999 02:14:53 -0000 Received: from user2.teleport.com (qmailr@192.108.254.12) by smtp8.teleport.com with SMTP; 26 Oct 1999 02:14:53 -0000 Received: (qmail 25501 invoked by uid 321); 26 Oct 1999 02:14:52 -0000 Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 19:14:51 -0700 (PDT) To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Update Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? In-Reply-To: <199910250732.DAA04599@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk An update: On Saturday, we sent a complaint about our dropped mail to and . The autoreply referred us to a FAQ web page at http://members.aol.com/postmaster/. There can be found a question 'what to do about mail dropped with no error' (paraphrased). That answer suggested we send a message to from the affected server, which we did. Interestingly, the autoresponder sent back it's reply almost immediately... (presumably aol.com and aol.net are different servers). Of course, there was no further reply or confirmation... but on Sunday, mail from our server was once again being delivered. It was SLOW, taking up to two hours to reach our AOL mailbox after we had successfully sent it, but THAT'S nothing new. I found Sharon's comment about problems on ONE list rather interesting, as we've also had listowners who swear that AOL is targeting their specific list. We always thought they were just paranoid, but ... as Chaq says, maybe they just like him (and not certain other listowners). :) Thanks to everyone for your prompt and knowledgable replies - you've been VERY helpful. -- Byron From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 27 11:38:10 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA09616; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:24:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA09606 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:24:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA04940 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 07:04:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from patroon ([160.43.47.9]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id KAA28896; Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:26:07 -0400 (EDT) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 10:26:16 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 In-reply-to: <199910250800.BAA28857@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk SRE wrote: > I've exchanged email with several list owners who had to change > hosts because AOL decided that all email from a given domain was > spam. They're not very selective, and they don't tell anyone which > domains they're black-holing. It's almost the same with WebTV, except that they do have a page http://www.webtv.net/antispam/ ) that lists all the hosts they've blacklisted. (Warning, it's a 2.5MB page!) They appear to have a dumb SMTP hack at work populating this list (I saw numerous aborted sessions in my logs from their bot) and although they claim to have a procedure for getting off the list, I have never seen it happen. From list-managers-owner Wed Oct 27 11:51:14 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA09767; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:26:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id LAA09755 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:26:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from iss.dccc.edu (iss.dccc.edu [207.103.163.10]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id TAA27764 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 19:34:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [207.103.163.10] by iss.dccc.edu id b8050.wrk; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:00:10 EDT Message-ID: <381694F0.52AE@iss.dccc.edu> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:00:16 -0700 From: Keith Flippin Reply-To: DrJesus@iss.dccc.edu Organization: NE-Raves Discussion List Admin. X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? References: <199910250800.BAA28857@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Sharon Tucci wrote: > The listowner himself has a couple of AOL addresses subscribed - > one always gets list messages and the other hasn't since the > problem started. Perhaps this was already thought of, but just in case... perhaps said account has had a filter set? I've had problems in the past with AOL users blocking mail from my list, rather than bothering to unsubscribe. Especially if this is an account that is shared, the left hand may not know what the right hath wrought. I admit this isn't a likely scenario, but it's something to check anyway. You know, like asking "is it plugged in" before getting into the real support questions. ;) -- NE-Raves Account Admin Geoff Capp Productions "Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum" From list-managers-owner Thu Oct 28 22:19:18 1999 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA02858; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 22:15:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id WAA02830 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Thu, 28 Oct 1999 22:15:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from tor-srs1.netcom.ca (tor-srs1.netcom.ca [207.93.1.148]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA11975 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:11:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sharon-p133 (ott-on7-76.netcom.ca [216.123.34.204]) by tor-srs1.netcom.ca (8.8.7-s-4/8.8.7) with SMTP id RAA10098 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:33:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199910272133.RAA10098@tor-srs1.netcom.ca> X-Sender: sharon@pop.listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 17:29:24 -0400 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sharon Tucci Subject: Re: AOL silently dropping mail again? In-Reply-To: <381694F0.52AE@iss.dccc.edu> References: <199910250800.BAA28857@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >Perhaps this was already thought of, but just in case... perhaps said >account has had a filter set? I've had problems in the past with AOL >users blocking mail from my list, rather than bothering to unsubscribe. >Especially if this is an account that is shared, the left hand may not >know what the right hath wrought. > >I admit this isn't a likely scenario, but it's something to check >anyway. You know, like asking "is it plugged in" before getting into the >real support questions. ;) Good point! In this case, messages were being delivered, then stopped. Now they appear to have started again once I contacted AOL. (Or at least no further reports of non-delivery.) Who knows? We have had a couple of cases before where new lists transferred to us or new subscribers on lists weren't able to receive email because of filtering. But this is the first time one list appeared to have any problems like this...so I don't think it is the same case. --------------------------------------------------------- Sharon Tucci sharon@slingshotmedia.com http://www.ListHost.net Sling Shot Media, LLC 1-613-933-5133 E-Mail List Hosting and Marketing SpeciaLists