How's the antivirus filtering on mail.wikimedia.org? The less obviously dispensible crap in the mailing list queue, the closer it will be to humanly manageable ...
I'm not sure the spam has abated, but having any mails from real people rejected is a bad thing. (wikien-l, unlike wikitech-l, has many legitimate users who can't work computers. Also, it's a semi-official contact point for blocked users on en:.
Mind you, the queue is going to be a nightmare to deal with. The Nazi spam hasn't abated in the slightest, apparently, with a fresh attack going out about a week ago. Good article from Der Spiegel (in English) on the Nazi virus, which sends people to Spiegel articles (which they're not happy with):
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,356297,00.html
- d.
David Gerard (dgerard@gmail.com) [050604 20:54]:
How's the antivirus filtering on mail.wikimedia.org? The less obviously dispensible crap in the mailing list queue, the closer it will be to humanly manageable ...
Further on this, I see we're running Postfix. Would the following be of use? It's a list of filter expressions for Postfix to catch the Nazi spam:
http://www.formorer.de/blogs/index.php?/archives/28-Nazi-Spam.html
(Of course, there'll be another propaganda virus next week or month ...)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
How's the antivirus filtering on mail.wikimedia.org? The less obviously dispensible crap in the mailing list queue, the closer it will be to humanly manageable ...
I strongly recommend taking a look at greylisting:
http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/
I've run it on two high-volume production mail servers for a few months now without a single legitimate message getting hard-bounced, and the spam volume has dropped tremendously. Adding one or two good, trusted RBLs (say, SBL-XBL) might also be worth considering. Greylisting is trivial to set up with Postfix, by the way.
-IK
Ivan Krstic (krstic@fas.harvard.edu) [050604 21:06]:
David Gerard wrote:
How's the antivirus filtering on mail.wikimedia.org? The less obviously dispensible crap in the mailing list queue, the closer it will be to humanly manageable ...
I strongly recommend taking a look at greylisting: http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/ I've run it on two high-volume production mail servers for a few months now without a single legitimate message getting hard-bounced, and the spam volume has dropped tremendously. Adding one or two good, trusted RBLs (say, SBL-XBL) might also be worth considering. Greylisting is trivial to set up with Postfix, by the way.
If something like that works well enough we might even be able to just let unsubscribed messages through :-D Although I understand there are now spam engines that retry failed messages ...
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Although I understand there are now spam engines that retry failed messages ...
Yes, there are, but they're still rare enough to not reduce the general effectiveness of the method (I think I received a total of one or two German spams). This will probably change down the road, but it's a pretty good solution until then, at no cost and almost no possibility of failure in the absence of a badly broken MTA.
-IK
How about configuring it to reject all mail from persons not subscribed to the list and send a message somewhat like "sorry, you're not subscribed to this list, please do so at *yadayadayada*...", that's what I did for wikiis-l after the spam got too much for my taste.
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (avarab@gmail.com) [050605 06:57]:
How about configuring it to reject all mail from persons not subscribed to the list and send a message somewhat like "sorry, you're not subscribed to this list, please do so at *yadayadayada*...", that's what I did for wikiis-l after the spam got too much for my taste.
I went looking for that message (what gets sent to unsubscribed posters) in the Mailman interface and couldn't find it. That would also be suitable as a solution. Where's the message?
- d.
On 6/4/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason (avarab@gmail.com) [050605 06:57]:
How about configuring it to reject all mail from persons not subscribed to the list and send a message somewhat like "sorry, you're not subscribed to this list, please do so at *yadayadayada*...", that's what I did for wikiis-l after the spam got too much for my taste.
I went looking for that message (what gets sent to unsubscribed posters) in the Mailman interface and couldn't find it. That would also be suitable as a solution. Where's the message?
I'm not surprised that you didn't find it, I had a hard time finding it myself when I was setting it up, I should have included instructions on how to do it in my original message but I was in a hurry.
Anyway, go to http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/admin/wikien-l/general => Privacy options => Sender filters and change: * default_member_moderation: no * member_moderation_action: Reject * member_moderation_notice: The notice you want to send to people that send mails to the list without being subscribed, this should include instructions on how to register. * generic_nonmember_action: Reject
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