[Cialug] Easy fixes for today's list spam

[Nicolai]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 11:00:05AM -0500, L. V. Lammert wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Mar 2011, Nicolai wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 02:10:08PM +0000, Josh More wrote:
> >
> > > I have temporarily set the list to require admin approval for new
> > > members.  If it is not too burdensome, I may keep it this way.
> >
> > I hope this is a temporary move, because (politically) it centralizes
> > the group.
> >
> On the contrary, anyone can volunteer to be a list admin - the only affect
> is to add some level of sanity into the subscription process.

Opt-in + confirm is sane and totally normal for an open source group
-- especially a small one like this.

Creating a team of "validators" would add complexity and reduce
sanity.  What if Jim thinks the new subscriber is a spammer, but
Bob doesn't?  Eventually this would come up if new subscriptions
weren't rubber-stamped.  Would they form a committee and hold
public debates?  Flip a coin?

Besides, how often does spam come through?  Once every few months?
That's not a situation that requires a team of list-membership
validators.  And to effectively validate a new member, what would
you do to verify that

  jimbob at example.com

is a source of spam?  If you tried and were serious, it would result
in more false positives than actual spam we're now receiving.
Turning away new subscribers would be harmful.

Using Spamhaus lists and blocking broken DNS would have blocked the
messages we got yesterday without added bureaucracy and complexity.

> PBLs are seldom a problem, as anyone without a static IP & reverse DNS
> would be savvy enough to forward through gmail or their ISPs server.

Just so we're clear, PBL refers to this:

  http://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/

Spammers are not savvy... at all.  They're dumber than script kiddies.

If you mean that spam is rarely sent through PBL-listed IP addresses,
that's wrong. :-) TONS of spam is sent from machines listed in the PBL.
Actually, most spam is sent from Windows zombies on cable modems and DSL
lines, and PBL catches a lot of it as that is PBL's purpose.

Spammers are not savvy.

> There's enough SPAM in the world already without totally open mail lists.

I'm not really sure what you're saying... It doesn't sound like you
understand what I've written.

Nicolai