Re: Simple solution? (was: SPAM!!)
On Thursday, 25. October 2001 07:59, Chris Adams wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 24, 2001, at 10:45 , Norbert Nemec wrote:
> > Anybody who is subscribed to any of the debian lists is automatically
> > added
> > to one global list of permitted senders. Addresses are never removed
> > from
> > there unless they are abused for spam.
> >
> > Now people would not have to subscribe to high-traffic lists to be
> > allowed to
> > post there, but they simply would have to subscribe to some list once
> > and may
> > even unsubscribe right afterwards. Anyway, we could make use of the full
>
> Carrying the idea a step further, have someone's first posting to a
> debian list generate a test message which they have to reply to.
That's part of the regular subscription process already. Nothing to add here.
> It would probably be necessary to add a blacklist with
> regexps so that abusers with wild-card addressing wouldn't find it quite
> as easy to bypass the checks.
There would be only two ways to send spam to the lists:
* do a regular subscription with an existing and working sender adress. You
could then either deactivate the address (far more work than any normal
spammer would be willing to do) afterwards or leave it open for people to
reply to the spam. Also, if that would really happen, that address could
simply be set on a blacklist and the spammer would have to subscribe again
for the next mail. No spammer would ever start a subscription for every
single mail...
* Fake the sender-address and use some address of someone who is already
subscribed. There's no protection against that, but it would mean that the
spammer would have to design his message specifically to send it to the
debian lists.
Therefore, the mechanism would surely be breakable with a little effort, but
it would provide absolute protection against spam that is simply sent to a
random list of addresses, which is by far the most common and most irritating
kind.
Ciao,
Nobbi
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