We've got a problem. We do a certain amount of spam filtering at our level, but a certain amount still gets passed through to the owner addresses. Some of it comes back, filtered at the ISP level. Now, we aren't allowed to ignore when our owners go offline, so we can't just set owner bounces to devnull, so the rejection ends up in our mailboxes, and we have to carefully read the bounce messages to see if they're legit or not. Most recently, someone's ISP has started bouncing *status* reports, because they contain the subject lines of spam that gets rejected. This is beginning to get frustrating... I'm supposed to be spending my Phoenyx time coding, not trying to handle other people's spam backwash. I'm open to suggestions about what to do to resolve the problem. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
Karen J. Cravens wrote: >Most recently, someone's ISP has started bouncing *status* reports, >because they contain the subject lines of spam that gets rejected. > >This is beginning to get frustrating... I'm supposed to be spending my >Phoenyx time coding, not trying to handle other people's spam backwash. >I'm open to suggestions about what to do to resolve the problem. Most spam allegedly comes from Florida. Nuke the state from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. More usefully, you could send an email to the ISP concerned, and ask them to make their filters a but smarter. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Kalyr Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Tim Hall wrote: TH>Most spam allegedly comes from Florida. Especially the aptly-named Boca Raton, yep. TH>More usefully, you could send an email to the ISP concerned, and ask TH>them to make their filters a but smarter. I'm not sure that's going to work. For one thing, we'll have to do it anew every time an owner changes ISPs, or their ISP changes software. I'm thinking maybe under the new software, even the owner addresses will be subject to the whitelist... now, that'll be a problem in the odd circumstance that someone is trying to send mail to the owner to say they can't get registered on the Phoenyx (which will be what puts them on the whitelist), but registration problems should be going to us and not the individual group managers anyway, and generally they shouldn't really *see* the owner addresses unless they're registered. We're probably switching MTAs, which should mean we can reject non-whitelisted mail at that level for selected addresses, which means we don't have the expense of spamchecking each rejection to see if it's worth sending a "go get registered" message (instead, it'll be incorporated in the bounce response). That'll help. The system's presently spending a vast amount of its resources spamchecking; so much so that I think it's slowing down web responses sometimes. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > I'm thinking maybe under the new software, even the owner addresses will > be subject to the whitelist... now, that'll be a problem in the odd > circumstance that someone is trying to send mail to the owner to say they > can't get registered on the Phoenyx (which will be what puts them on the > whitelist), but registration problems should be going to us and not the > individual group managers anyway, and generally they shouldn't really > *see* the owner addresses unless they're registered. We should provide a web form for problems like that anyway. What if we just provided web forms to email list owners with and quit giving out list-owner addresses? Maybe a little inconvenient for the few who know how to email the list-owner directly, but it'd probably work out better. Along those lines, eliminate the "help" and "support" addresses and make them web-form-only as well. We could switch to using an obfuscated name (p-help) that never gets published on a web page. > The system's presently spending a vast amount of its resources > spamchecking; so much so that I think it's slowing down web responses > sometimes. If you're not using a customized user_prefs for Firehawk, you should switch to using the daemonized SpamAssassin process... it's very simple and runs much, much faster. That's what I was doing before I switched to bogofilter (a mixed bag, that). If you are using a customized user_prefs, we should look at putting those rules in the global ruleset and use the daemon anyway. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>We should provide a web form for problems like that anyway. I will, but I'm still maintaining the "everything can still be done via email" policy. CDC>What if we just provided web forms to email list owners with and quit CDC>giving out list-owner addresses? Maybe a little inconvenient for the few CDC>who know how to email the list-owner directly, but it'd probably work out CDC>better. See above. CDC>Along those lines, eliminate the "help" and "support" addresses and make CDC>them web-form-only as well. We could switch to using an obfuscated name CDC>(p-help) that never gets published on a web page. See above. Of course, maybe the policy should change. CDC>If you're not using a customized user_prefs for Firehawk, you should CDC>switch to using the daemonized SpamAssassin process... it's very simple CDC>and runs much, much faster. That's what I was doing before I switched to CDC>bogofilter (a mixed bag, that). CDC>If you are using a customized user_prefs, we should look at putting those CDC>rules in the global ruleset and use the daemon anyway. I am using a customized user_prefs, but I can't remember why. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > We've got a problem. We do a certain amount of spam filtering at our > level, but a certain amount still gets passed through to the owner > addresses. > > Some of it comes back, filtered at the ISP level. Now, we aren't allowed > to ignore when our owners go offline, so we can't just set owner bounces > to devnull, so the rejection ends up in our mailboxes, and we have to > carefully read the bounce messages to see if they're legit or not. > > Most recently, someone's ISP has started bouncing *status* reports, > because they contain the subject lines of spam that gets rejected. > > This is beginning to get frustrating... I'm supposed to be spending my > Phoenyx time coding, not trying to handle other people's spam backwash. > I'm open to suggestions about what to do to resolve the problem. Send a summary "XX spam messages" with a link to more details. Those GMs that care can click on the link to get the details and those that don't won't have to pour through their status messges for notices of actual legitimate messages. You can also set an age for the full "Spam Details" to be deleted and replaced with a "Link too old, Spam Details discarded" message. And list owners can set a "Don't bother with Spam Details" flag and then you don't need to bother keeping them at all. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Rumors of War / Science Fiction Category Editor Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Michael Feldhusen wrote: > Send a summary "XX spam messages" with a link to more details. Those > GMs that care can click on the link to get the details and those that > don't won't have to pour through their status messges for notices of > actual legitimate messages. You can also set an age for the full > "Spam Details" to be deleted and replaced with a "Link too old, Spam > Details discarded" message. And list owners can set a "Don't bother > with Spam Details" flag and then you don't need to bother keeping them > at all. I hate to go through a lot of coding effort to let people optionally view spam. :) I didn't even realize that detail level 0 sent a list of rejected messages... I set all my lists to detail level 1, and the rejected message was the first I'd seen that. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>I hate to go through a lot of coding effort to let people optionally view CDC>spam. :) CDC> CDC>I didn't even realize that detail level 0 sent a list of rejected CDC>messages... I set all my lists to detail level 1, and the rejected message CDC>was the first I'd seen that. I'm inclined to say that's the solution to that problem; that was the point of the detail levels, anyhow. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Karen J. Cravens wrote: > I'm inclined to say that's the solution to that problem; that was the > point of the detail levels, anyhow. For bounced status reports, yes. (I set that particular account to level 1 after that bounce anyway.) It's the mail sent to-owner getting bounced that's the bigger concern. I'm deleting ten or more a day just bounced from Ian's ISP. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Carl D Cravens wrote: CDC>It's the mail sent to-owner getting bounced that's the bigger CDC>concern. I'm deleting ten or more a day just bounced from Ian's ISP. Right. And I've got fh_owner.pl set to drop mail that's higher than a 3 from SpamAssassin. I think that's stricter than my own mailbox. I'm almost inclined to just scrap the GROUPNAME-owner addresses altogether. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
Maybe cold comfort for you, but I've still not seen a single spam on my list, so big-ups for your gate-keeping from me and my group! /Magnus B, Cragbain listowner -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Tim Hall wrote: > More usefully, you could send an email to the ISP concerned, and ask > them to make their filters a but smarter. Problem is, the Phoenyx generates a new message to the list owner... it doesn't include all the sender data. So what the ISP is seeing is spam coming from the Phoenyx. What's silly is that the ISP's are bouncing the spam as undeliverable instead of silently discarding it. And they're not pretending like the user doesn't exist to fool the spammer into deleting the address from their list... they're explictly saying the message was rejected for its content. What's annoying is that our own spam filtering isn't catching this stuff and their filter is. Maybe we need to fine-tune our spam filter a little more. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Game(s): Fudge, Worldmaking, Fantasy Co-Editor, Phoenyx Co-Owner Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners/
