Klarinet Archive - Posting 000240.txt from 1995/08

From: Gary Bisaga <gary@-----.ORG>
Subj: Junk mail (aka spam) -- to list maintainer(s)
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 08:25:21 -0400

Ok, everybody, calm down about the junk mail. First off, most
way-off-topic postings that I've seen ("spams" in net.lingo) are not
sent by somebody actually subscribed to the list, but by people (like
this Jeff Slaton character) who just get lists of mailing list names
and send the spam to those lists. So, among other things, sending
notes to the list requesting that the spam stop is (a) ineffective
(the spammer never sees the notes) and (b) as annoying to the real
members of the list as the original spam.

So, what to do about it? This is a note to the klarinet list
maintainer(s). I can think of two possible solutions. Is there any
way we can implement one of these on the klarinet list processor?

1) I have seen mailing lists that only post messages sent by somebody
who is actually a member of the list. I think that this is
generally the best solution, although you could get in trouble
if people's sendmail.cf's are not set up correctly. Do list
processors have a capability for allowing mail from multiple legal
"from" addresses for each list subscriber? Maybe both the subscriber's
original subscribe request "from" address and a requested send-to
address could be recorded for this purpose.

2) A shorter term solution might be one I mentioned before, to require
the word "klarinet" to show up in a header line or the body. It
has the obvious drawback of requiring people the make sure this
word appears somewhere.

Gary