Allan Schaffer (allan++at++sgi.com)
Wed, 29 Sep 1999 13:58:26 -0700 (PDT)
I've made some improvements to the info-performer mail processing
scripts and tightened up the spam-detection portions. One important
change, please read this:
1. Messages must now be sent to 'info-performer' explicitly, meaning
it must be listed on the To: or Cc: lines of your message.
Blind-carbon-copied (Bcc) messages to info-performer will be
trapped & redirected to the list owner.
And a few other less-important changes:
2. I've added a 'Precedence: bulk' entry to each header that goes
through the lists -- this should prevent 'Out of the office'
auto-replies from being triggered & sent back to you.
3. Blacklists. Mail from certain hand-picked sites with a history
of spam abuse are automatically filtered.
And a few old features to remind you about:
4. Messages containing 'Subscribe' or 'Unsubscribe' in their Subject
line are redirected to the list owner. Couldn't do 'remove',
it's too common in other contexts.
5. Messages greater than 100Kbytes in length are redirected to the
list owner.
"Allan, what brought this on?"
I hate spam, and info-performer has made it's way into various
spammers' lists. The likely cause is from harvesting email addresses
out of our public archives on the web.
Early this a.m. someone _tried_ to spam the list with about 40-50MB
of gunk, mostly MP3 files and the like. We all lucked out because
the server redirects all messages greater than 100K in length to the
moderator (a feature added awhile back) and each message happened to
be around 2-3MB in this case.
Most spammers (not all!) 'Bcc' their messages to their ill-gotten
distribution lists. So #1 above will eliminate this particular case
and should have very little effect on the list otherwise. Between
this technique & the blacklist we can eliminate most of the spam.
The final weapon in the arsenal would be to check every message to
see if the sender is a subscriber to the list. We're not doing this
one yet.
If you've included info-performer on a distribution alias of your own
(certain newsletters & announcements have done this) don't worry,
your message will be redirected to the list owner who will review it
and forward it along.
And finally, if you have any problems please contact me directly
(allan++at++sgi.com).
Enjoy,
Allan
----
Allan Schaffer allan++at++sgi.com
Silicon Graphics http://reality.sgi.com/allan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Wed Sep 29 1999 - 13:58:30 PDT