Klarinet Archive - Posting 000242.txt from 1995/08

From: Luuk van Buul <vanbuul@-----.NL>
Subj: Re: Junk mail (aka spam) -- to list maintainer(s)
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 1995 11:57:09 -0400

On Thu Aug, 17 1995 Gary Bisaga wrote:
>
> 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
>

There is another option, not mentioned by you: a list moderator. This is a
person receiving all postings to the list and deciding whether they should be
passed through to the members or bounced back to the originator. On Usenet
there are numerous moderated newsgroups.

Luuk van Buul

vanbuul@-----.nl