Re: Apologies - and a potential problem

Michael Poole (poole@graviton.res.cmu.edu)
14 Jun 1998 17:47:19 -0400

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CyberCat <MauriceV@bellsouth.net> writes:

> Obviously, it didn't, which means we all have a problem. If ANYONE can send
> messages to this list, regardless of whether or not they have joined the list,
> we're probably going to see a lot of spam and what not in the future - the
> unmoderated cypherpunks list provides a model of what things might be like.
>
> Perhaps the list owner might be so kind as to investigate and fix the problem?

        If this was "fixed", there would still be a problem -- there are a large
number of sites that locally explode mailing lists; these have benefits for the
list maintainer (fewer subscribers -> less traffic, and the exploder address is
much less likely to generate bounces than the average subscriber address), the
local admins (less network traffic), and the readers (it's easy to keep a fairly
large archive of recent messages on the exploder, and don't have to worry about
one's own mail quota being filled by a mailing list). I read the CodherPlunks
list from behind a exploder, and I wasn't the one who requested that the exploder
here be set up -- so it's not a rare thing to see.

        Moreover, making posting available to direct subscribers only would not
prevent spammers from subscribing a bit bucket to the list and forging posts from
it (or forging posts from a legitimate subscriber whose address they pick up from
the list, or from subscribing a free address to the list long enough to spam it).
The real ways to fix spam over mailing lists is not to prevent posts from
non-subscribers -- it's to make sure that forged messages are not likely to be
accepted by MTAs, and for MUAs to filter incoming messages.

-- Michael

P.S.: A search on altavista for 'CodherPlunks subscribe' turned up version 1.2 of
the CodherPlunks charter as the first hit, and it has instructions on how to
subscribe in its first paragraph. Wasn't that easy?

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