Please don't reply to spam - Was: Freebsd Project Drug Awareness

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2016 12:37:40 +0100, Dave B via freebsd-questions wrote:
>Trouble with the way this list is set-up, the default "reply to"
>address goes straight to the list.
>
>Therefore, any mail sent to the list, on any subject, will get piped
>right through to the spammers, as well as the rest of us.
>
>You dont need to reply "to the spammers", they get a response
>automatically, even this one.
>
>The best defence is to stay silent, or if you do reply/post to the
>list, *Trim* the message to eliminate as much non relevant stuff
>(especially embedded links) as you can.

So there seems to be the need to explain it.

If valid subscribers of a mailing list continue a thread started by a
spammer, it becomes difficult to distinguish between wanted mail and
unwanted mail from the mailing list.

I flag all unwanted mail from a mailing list that reaches me as
junk, so usually only the wanted mails from a list reach me and usually
there are no false positives. IOW usually I don't get annoyed by the
spam that comes through a mailing list and usually I'm not missing
wanted mail.

This kind of filtering becomes harder to do, if the spam is mixed with
replies from regular subscribers.

There are other reasons to not reply to spam, by continuing the thread,
too.

However, since there were complains about a high amount of spam...

Spam: Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Rebecca Preston
1       Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Alejandro Imass
2         Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Stephen Cook
3             Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Steve O'Hara-Smith
4             Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Brandon Wandersee
5             Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Michael Sierchio 
6       Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Ian Smith
7         Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Steve O'Hara-Smith 
8       Freebsd Project Drug Awareness   Bertram Scharpf
New thread: 
9     Please don't reply to spam - Was: Freebsd Project Drug Awareness
      Ralf Mardorf
10      Please don't reply to spam - Was: Freebsd Project Drug Awareness
        Bertram Scharpf
11      Please don't reply to spam - Was: Freebsd Project Drug Awareness
        Dave B
12        The mail I'm writing now.
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2016-October/thread.html

...note, in the first place I replied off-list. 1 spam cause 12
unneeded mails, most inform us about which subscribers have teenager
knowledge about Timothy Leary, Albert Hofmann and that they know
how fans of Jerry García and Band are called. Apart from this spam
filtering got broken, at least by some MUAs using bogofilter, while
bogofilter works perfect before the replies.

Regards,
Ralf