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Re: Spam in the lists out of control



On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 05:03:53PM +0200, Marek Habersack wrote:
> On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 04:48:10PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst scribbled:
> [snip]
> > > > each and every one of them.
> > > That's the attitude I'm writing about below. And I find no arguments
> > > to counter that. I assume you're receiving tons of challenges from
> > > many systems every day
> > 
> > I'm not; however, I find them *far* more annoying than actual spam
> > messages.
> Let me ask you a question I asked Bas in the other thread. What if I receive
> spam with your name on it and I write a _manually typed_ inquiry saying
> "Hey, Wouter, is that you who sent the spam with this or that MessageId?"?
> Will you treat it as spam?

Probably not.

> It will have all the characteristics (but one, automation) of spam.

That's what Bas said, not me :-)

> It will differ from the TMDA challenge only by that single detail,
> that it won't be automated. Will you still be annoyed?

Most likely, yes.

[...]
> > > You have your strong points and beliefs and you're not going to change
> > > them no matter what.
> > 
> > That's not true; but in this particular case, I haven't seen any
> > argument other than "it gets me rid of all spam at the cost of making it
> > a bit worse for you; but see, you can easily get rid of all that, if you
> > just jump through these hoops. Oh, and these too. And those."
> Please, give me _one_ way for me to make sure a spam apparently originating from you
> (with your, say debian, address), that is a person I don't know, wasn't sent
> by you? The only thing I can do is ask - can I ask you should I receive such
> mail?

Rest assured, spammers don't send mail from their real email address
anymore. If you receive spam, the from: is usually forged.

No need to annoy other people with that type of question.

> > To me, that argument is the moral equivalent of dumping your trash in
> > some random person's garden, and expecting that person to clean up. But
> > then, perhaps that's just me...
> Again, the world is not black and white.

I'm not claiming otherwise.

> > Contrary to tmda users, I happen to think people sending me mail have
> > legitimate reasons to do so, in most cases. I don't often blacklist
> I think you, just the same as Bas, missed something I wrote before. The tmda
> challenge is sent out (in our setup) only for mails that are scored by
> spamassassin above 1.0 and below 10.0, so there is a very, very small chance
> ANY legitimate mail will _ever_ be challenged. What is the chance of me
> receiving a mail from you that would be scored in that range?

Pretty high, actually. I'm on IPv6, and all my mails have an IPv6
address in their Received: headers. I've seen some spamfilters choke on
that. Not enough to block my mail, but I've seen circumstances where I
scored in that range, on occasion.

-- 
         EARTH
     smog  |   bricks
 AIR  --  mud  -- FIRE
soda water |   tequila
         WATER
 -- with thanks to fortune



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