Re: spam

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

Rob Kendrick said:
	Would it be sensible to only accept posting from list members?

I could restrict posting to list members only, but that could be inconvenient
for two reasons: first, some people post from different accounts, even if
they are from the same domain, and sometimes the machine appears in the address,
and so would be rejected. This has happened in the listproc days. Second, there
are some 80 members in the eGroups version of lua-l and I don't know their
addresses! I don't want to allienate them.

I'm really sorry for the spam that has appeared in lua-l in the last few days.

Although it might not seem so, I've been actively trying figure a way to avoid
spam in lua-l. I've installed a filter for mail to lua@tecgraf.puc-rio.br as
a test, and it seems to be doing well, even thought it's not perfect.
lua@tecgraf.puc-rio.br gets a *lot* of spam, unlike lua-l@tecgraf.puc-rio.br,
which has only received 7 spam messages since August:

    1 jo333_4@lawrence-lca  Wed Sep  6 09:52 532/22007 "Inspired Internet Bus"
    2 houston@gime.com      Mon Oct 23 06:25  27/1130  "The maillist,thanks!"
    3 bd@freetravelservice  Sat Oct 28 07:08  83/3298  "4 days and 3 nights i"
    4 telem1782@ig.com.br   Sat Nov 11 22:01 234/9387  "Ecocardiograma por Te"
    5 mailresponse2@g7ps.c  Tue Nov 14 01:21  73/3228  "New Qchex Service for"
    6 mailresponse2@g7ps.c  Wed Nov 15 21:31  35/1279  "Send & Accept Checks "
    7 owc431952@ig.com.br   Sun Nov 19 20:34 191/6088  ""CALLBACK" - Brasil-E"

(In the same period, lua@tecgraf.puc-rio.br received 77 spam messages!)

Of these 7, only 2 were actually "To: lua@tecgraf.puc-rio.br".
So, I plan to add this single restriction to lua-l: lua-l must appear in a
"To: " or "Cc: " header.
(I have a similar filter for my own mail and it works well.)
I think this will avoid most of the spam without being inconvenient to others.
Some spam is likely to go through. I apologize for these.

Again, I'm sorry for the spam, but lua-l seems to be doing really well with
respect to spam in these 4 months since the new list server was installed,
(7 spam x 669 legitimate posts -- that's 1%!) and so I didn't think anything
needed to be done.

I'm open to suggestions of course. I can even send the server code to
anyone interested in helping -- my only restriction is that it remains simple.
--lhf