Re: [tlug] TLUG spam?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Josh" == Josh Glover <tlug@example.com> writes:

    Josh> It generates between 200-500 spams a day, about %15 of which
    Josh> are currently beating my SpamAssassin setup.

SpamAssassin currently sucks, mostly because they have spent more time
on writing new improved versions of the code than they have on
updating recipes.  Cf. http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html.

<a href="http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/Tools/Attitude/procmailrc";>
This</a> makes a big improvement.  I'd say only 1-2% get past that
(which includes a SpamAssassin run), and less than 1 in 1000 false
positives (of course about half go to /dev/null, but I doubt that
increases the average rate).  The procmailrc on xemacs.org is even
better, but I haven't had time to synch to that in about a month.

Basically, if I was willing to trust to probability, I could get away
with an hour a week on spam-fighting, which ain't bad for a listmaster
whose open-post lists are Google-able and whose addresses are
published on the home page.  As it is, it's about an hour a day
because my co-postmasters are on vacation.  Sure, I'd rather be
coding, but we have somewhere between 1000 (the largest list) and 2500
(sum of subscriptions) subscribers, so every spam I stop saves a
man-hour.

    Josh> Spam is a fact of life on today's Internet. Those of us who
    Josh> use email heavily have to invest time on our filtering
    Josh> setup.

It actually wouldn't be that hard if I knew how to use Windows.  I'd
teach my mother to sign her mail with PGP, and once I had that in
place, anybody who doesn't sign their mail goes to the bit-bucket.  ;-)

Really, that is the solution.  There is no other, short of AI that is
as good as a human at detecting spam; all digital IDs are trivial to
forge, you must have cryptographic authentication.

    Josh> I am sorry that TLUG lacks the stealth technology necessary
    Josh> to avoid the spammers.

You're starting to sound like Godwin: "cluck, cluck, cluck".  (Next
he'll be laying eggs, I bet.)  We have the cycles, we should meet them
head-on.  Do we not all have MTAs?  Require TLS and PGP signatures to
post.  Among other things, that will shut me up for a few days.  ;-)

And for another, I could spoof addresses for the amusement of the
humans while getting past the 'bot once I prove I'm a dog.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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              ask what your business can "do for" free software.