[ILUG] Spam and more spam

[Colm Buckley]

On 2 Mar 2004, at 22:40, Rick Moen wrote:

> 1.  Elimination of almost all incoming spam / malware mail at the 
> level of the listhost's MTA during SMTP time.  Suggested software:  
> sa-exim (http://marc.merlins.org/linux/exim/sa.html), which I use with 
> Exim4.

Interestingly, Marc's now a colleague of mine.  Small world.  I'll see 
whether something similar can be implemented for Postfix.  Justin?  
Thoughts?

> 2.  Minor reconfiguration of this list's Mailman settings to hold for 
> admin approval all posting from non-subscribed addresses.

Unless I can eliminate the spam and virus mail before it hits mailman, 
this isn't really an option - there are about 150 messages per day 
being dumped into the mod queue for various reasons.  Picking out 
genuine messages from this isn't an attractive option, especially with 
mailman's Rather Slow interface.  At the moment, anything that's held 
for moderation gets a *quick* scan two or three times per week, and 
most of it is dumped.

> What you _can't_ see is that not only does zero spam / malware mail / 
> gibberish mail make it through, but also almost none even makes it 
> past the MTA checks (and then is held for listadmin review).

This would be a necessary prerequisite to any human moderation of the 
ILUG lists; the volume is immense and not at all amenable to human 
moderation,

> I approve the mail, then add the sending address to the "list of 
> non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted" 
> (Privacy Options, Sender Filters).  All subsequent posts from that 
> non-subscribed address then automatically pass through without being 
> held for listadmin attention.

Yes, yes.  I do know how mailman works...  that's not the problem.  We 
have to stop (most) spam and viruses before they hit mailman at all, or 
the volume is unsustainable.

> Judging from what Colm's been saying, he must be bedeviled by dozens 
> of Mailman nagmails per day, almost all of it for junkmail (spam, 
> etc.).  I typically get zero such notices per day regarding the lists 
> on my mail host.

Well, I have it configured for daily notifications rather than 
per-message notifications.  So now I get things like "ILUG at linux.ie has 
2,740 messages awaiting moderation.  Please deal with these at your 
convenience."  Hardly an improvement.

	Colm

-- 
Colm Buckley / colm at tuatha.org / +353 87 2469146 / www.colm.buckley.name