Shorewall devel - Sep 2004 - More on Anti-spam measures

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The list server at shorewall.net is seeing a small but steady stream of
quaranteened messages from anti-spam software that is asking the list
server to respond and thus register itself as a legitimate source of
email. I also receive these requests personally.

Here''s an example:
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*** THIS IS AN *AUTOMATED* REPLY: PLEASE READ THIS MESSAGE CAREFULLY ***

Your message has been recieved, but has not yet been delivered to my
account. It is currently held in a queue awaiting address verification.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume of unsolicited e-mail sent to my
account each and every day, it has been necessary to implement this very
restrictive anti-spam measure.

Please click ''Reply'' in your email client (making sure that
you leave
the subject line intact) within 14 days of recieving this message, and
your e-mail will be released from the queue and delivered to my account.

This process only needs to be completed once, as all future messages
sent to my account (from your email address) will be delivered without
delay, and without any other verification.

If you need any help, or have any questions / queries regarding this
process, please feel free to call me directly on +44 (0) 7958 540 596.

Kind Regards,
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I have two reactions to these posts and to the people who use the
software that generates them:

a) The list server has no way of responding to the posts so unless you
have some way to tell this idiotic software to accept email from the
list *THAT YOU SUBSCRIBED TO* you are out of luck.

b) In all cases, the person whose system is sending these things
*subscribed to this list and/or asked for help* and I find it senseless
that each person who subsequently posts on the list or who offers help
is then asked to respond to one of these posts. It strikes me as a
"fight spam with spam" strategy that says that "I get too much
spam so
the solution is to inconvenience everyone with whom I correspond".

In summary, these posts go to /dev/null here -- I don''t reply to them.

I am sent a staggering amount of spam each day but with passive measures
(MTA configuration and SpamAssassin), less than 1% of that spam makes
its way to my INBOX.

My $.02US worth....

- -Tom
- --
Tom Eastep    \ Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool
Shoreline,     \ http://shorewall.net
Washington USA  \ teastep@shorewall.net
PGP Public Key   \ https://lists.shorewall.net/teastep.pgp.key
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Tom Eastep wrote:
>b) In all cases, the person whose system is sending these things
>*subscribed to this list and/or asked for help* and I find it senseless
>that each person who subsequently posts on the list or who offers help
>is then asked to respond to one of these posts. It strikes me as a
>"fight spam with spam" strategy that says that "I get too
much spam so
>the solution is to inconvenience everyone with whom I correspond".
>
Now, let''s watch two people with automated verication try to talk to 
each other.

userA -> userB
autoB -> userA "please reply to verify"
autoA -> autoB "please reply to verify"

No you verify! No you! No you....  Now sit back and let the laughter 
out! :-D

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Mike Fedyk wrote:
> Tom Eastep wrote:
>
>> b) In all cases, the person whose system is sending these things
>> *subscribed to this list and/or asked for help* and I find it senseless
>> that each person who subsequently posts on the list or who offers help
>> is then asked to respond to one of these posts. It strikes me as a
>> "fight spam with spam" strategy that says that "I get
too much spam so
>> the solution is to inconvenience everyone with whom I correspond".
>>
> Now, let''s watch two people with automated verication try to talk
to
> each other.
>
> userA -> userB
> autoB -> userA "please reply to verify"
> autoA -> autoB "please reply to verify"
>
> No you verify! No you! No you....  Now sit back and let the laughter
> out! :-D
:-)

Yep -- This whole thing is just a really bad idea.....

- -Tom
- --
Tom Eastep    \ Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool
Shoreline,     \ http://shorewall.net
Washington USA  \ teastep@shorewall.net
PGP Public Key   \ https://lists.shorewall.net/teastep.pgp.key
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