OT Spam technology was: Re: The "Military, Industrial Complex" is no more -- The Hidden Massive Racial Discrimination in America against Whites

[Jon Radel]

Ivan Petrushev wrote:
> So there is not spam protection or whatever installed on the software
> servicing the mail list? Abuse control? User registration approval?
> 
> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Jon Radel <jon at radel.com> wrote:
>> Ivan Petrushev wrote:
>>> Excuse me, why such a spam comes to the members of freebsd-pf mail list?
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:05 AM, Lawrence Auster
>>> <lawrence.auster at att.net> wrote:
>> ....crap trimmed....
>>
>> Oh, for heaven's sake get a grip.  DO NOT SEND THE WHOLE LOAD OF CRAP TO
>> ALL OF US YET AGAIN!  At very least, learn to trim.
>>
>> As to your question:  Because somebody sent it to the mailing list.
>> Doh!  There are a lot of these going to many technical mailing lists,
>> many with forged return addresses.
>>
>> --Jon Radel
>>
>>

Hmmmm...that's about as useful as my asking why you were allowed to
forward personal mail I sent to you on to this mailing list.  (Heads up:
 many people consider that rather rude.)

I'm not sure you've sufficiently thought through how a spam filter
works.  Suffice it to say, until there is some pattern of abuse
established, there's not much an automated filter can do.  You need some
word choice, pattern of words, formatting style, source address, header,
phone number, URL and/or some combination of these which has in some
fashion been determined to be "bad".  Consequently, the first couple
examples of a soberly worded political statement really aren't going to
trigger any automated spam filtering, no matter how far out on whichever
fringe that statement might be to humans who can actually comprehend
what it says.

"Abuse control"  Beautiful words.  Describe what you mean with enough
precision so that somebody can program something up that a brutally
literal minded computer can follow.

"User registration approval"  Pray tell, unless the list managers pay
for intensive background investigations for all new subscribers, how are
they to reliably tell the difference between somebody who plans to send
as many screeds as possible before being cut off and some PF fan boy
just dying to drone on about why Cisco SIP fixup makes ASAs so inferior
to what PF does?

About the only way to keep this from ever happening is to have a
moderated list which depends on security much stronger than the return
address of the moderator.  (This particular "set" of messages has been
seen recently on some announcement lists where the sender simply forged
the return address of a moderator.)  However, a moderated list has costs
of its own, requiring much volunteer or paid labor and, unless you pay
for a staff of 6+, generally involving what can be substantial delays.

All that said, there are various heuristic methods in play to increase
the cost and reduce the probability of spamming on the FreeBSD mailing
lists, which is why the noise from spam is so low.  Lower even than the
noise from people writing about the spam.

And now I've finished adding noise.  Respond privately, please, if you
for whatever reason feel you have more to add to this discussion.  And
refrain, if you don't mind, from forwarding my personal mail to a
mailing list.

--Jon Radel
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