Steve Grubb wrote:
On Wednesday 08 February 2006 05:32, Mike A. Harris wrote:
- Having uol.com.br blacklisted via the MTA by the admin of my domain.
There's another option:
- Delete everyone out of the mail list and let everybody re-enroll.
That wouldn't solve anything. Some people would just not bother resubscribing due to laziness or not caring. Those that would resubscribe, certainly would not preclude the problematic person, so nothing would be gained. The majority of list subscribers would be annoyed with no real world gain.
I'm a bit reluctant to join a discussion that can have no useful outcome... but I guess I may as well make it clear that we can't fix this problem unless someone can intimidate uol.com.br fix their policy
The major problem is that the idiots running the domain send their antispam confirmation messages to the From: header address rather than the envelope sender address - this particularly fouls up in the case of mailing lists where the From: header is very different to the envelope sender. If you really have to respond to the From: header (and I'd maintain that since you are sending a message disposition response you should be sending it to the envelope address) then you should at least honour reply-to (which would have fixed the problem in this case).
So the proposed solutions so far...
- This person immediately disables this antispam confirmation
Good, but it won't happen.
- The list administrators kindly remove the person's address
Lucky administrators who get to play whack-a-mole when you can bet they don't even see the moles themselves but have to be told about them by other folks...
Blocking them from subscribing runs you into a arms race between them and us - people will subscribe with aliased addresses and the like.
- I for one, will unsubscribe from all of the fedora lists,
Actually thats the most effective solution - but its unacceptable.
- Having uol.com.br blacklisted via the MTA by the admin of my domain
That only moves the problem around a bit - it solves it for a few people but leaves the rest of the world with the same problem. If done on the RH system it might help because anyone from that domain won't be able to confirm their subscription (although you may be able to get round that fairly easily).
- Delete everyone out of the mail list and let everybody re-enroll.
Well that would clean the lists out... but they would resubscribe. Several others who are more valuable to us would not resubscribe.
- Probe for the idiot concerned.
This just leads you back to (2). I have done that once in a case where there was a very active autoresponder on a list, but its last resort stuff.
Oddly enough it appears that some people get these replies, and others don't - for example I see no evidence of any connections to my mail systems from uol.br.com other than a couple of drive by spammers on dialup. I certainly haven't got the confirmations - not even failed attempts to send me confirmations.
The only sensible way to fix this is to deal with uol.com.br and get them to make their spam control stuff half sane - or go the no spam route and disconnect from the net.
Nigel.
Hi.
On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:13:09 +0000, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
The major problem is that the idiots running the domain send their antispam confirmation messages to the From: header address rather than the envelope sender address - this particularly fouls up in the case of mailing lists where the From: header is very different to the envelope sender.
What is the use of sending confirmation messages to an address which is handled exclusively by machines?
On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 13:39 +0100, Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
Hi.
On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:13:09 +0000, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
The major problem is that the idiots running the domain send their antispam confirmation messages to the From: header address rather than the envelope sender address - this particularly fouls up in the case of mailing lists where the From: header is very different to the envelope sender.
What is the use of sending confirmation messages to an address which is handled exclusively by machines?
Absolutely none at all... the whole thing is pretty pointless. Basically you should take a mailing list as a whole - allow all of the content or none of it. That would happen for them automatically if they sent confirmation requests to the envelope sender .... the fact that no one would bother to reply to them is their problem, as is the fact that the MLM would unsubscribe them if they keep sending (effective) bounce messages to it.
Nigel.
Nigel Metheringham wrote:
The only sensible way to fix this is to deal with uol.com.br and get them to make their spam control stuff half sane - or go the no spam route and disconnect from the net.
If only Uol would listen.. I've sent a few complaints already to them about these e-mails when they first appeared on fedora-list but so far, I haven't received any answer. Maybe if they start receiving several complaints about the same person they may do something... Or they just keep their position of "we're one of the biggest ISPs in Brazil and we don't need to bow to anyone's wishes to block one of our users".
I'll probably meet this weekend with one guy who has worked there and may still have some contacts with the sysadmins. Maybe this way we can make them aware of their crappy challenge-response mess..
-- Pedro Macedo
On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 12:13:09PM +0000, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
- Having uol.com.br blacklisted via the MTA by the admin of my domain
That only moves the problem around a bit - it solves it for a few people but leaves the rest of the world with the same problem. If done on the RH system it might help because anyone from that domain won't be able to confirm their subscription (although you may be able to get round that fairly easily).
Just block Brazil. That'll create an incentive for Brazillians to fix uol.com.br ;)
(Not thats not a totally serious suggestion)
Alan
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Alan Cox -
Mike A. Harris -
Nigel Metheringham -
Pedro Fernandes Macedo -
Ralf Ertzinger