[AktiviX-discuss] dying under the spam

[ana]

Hi Jono and all,

I'm not an expert on this but let me "show off" the little I know :)

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007, jono wrote:

 
> But lately, the spam has gotten to an unbelievable level.  

I too get a fair bit of spam. However - we only see on our inboxes a 
fraction of the spam that is actually sent to them. For my own address, I 
guess from the logs that SpamAssassin, http://spamassassin.apache.org/ 
discards between 80 and 90% of it. I'm not sure about mailman (see below) 
but this would mean that our individual mailboxes get just between 10 and 
20% of the spam sent to them - so imagine what it would be without it ;)

> now, I have been unable to moderate messages from non-subscribers (I have 
> to just delete them all, because there is too much spam to sort through). 

Ok this relates to mailman which "lives" in a different server than the 
mail server, maybe the administrator/s of that list can say something? In 
any case, in my experience, discarding spam mounts to about 99% of the 
work of a moderator, the only improvement I would ask from the present 
aktivix mailman installation is a "discard all" button although for me the 
"Discard all messages marked Defer" option does just as nicely ... 

Another option would be to automatically discard all messages that come 
from addresses that are not subscribed to the list, which is within the 
options you have within the admin interface ...

> But lately, I cannot read my own personal mail, because of the spam which 
> is both sent to the list and also to the moderator account.

There are different filters and option that work different whether you 
mostly use the web interface or a mail client, I personally think that the 
best option for most people is to use imap with Thunderbird, although of 
course would depend  on different circumnstances, like, do you use 
dial-up, broadband ... I would recommend something definite once knowing 
how you check your emails...

> I wonder if some things could be done such as taking out the "mailto" tag 
> on the listinfo page??

I'm not sure about this myself. I administer one list that has always been 
closed, not archived and not even showing in the list of lists, yet there 
is always "someone" who cross posts to open lists etc no matter how many 
times you ask on-list to please not do that and the result is that this 
"secret" list is now almost buried in spam - about 30 a day. I don't 
understand how it has happened and I'm not complaining, I'm just saying 
that although what you suggest is doable, from my experience I don't see 
it will necessarily make a differnce. 

As I say I do not have access to the list server so it should be some one 
else maybe expanding on this, and from now on in this email I only talk 
about the mail server, i.e. individual email addresses/mailboxes.

> but the amount of spam which is unmarked is just massive.

You can "educate" thunderbird to make its own marking, it really works a 
treat.

> Any advice?  Anything that can be done?

Apologies in advance if my answer is too long or too harsh to be readable. 
Yes there are things that could be done. But let's bear in mind that 
aktivix is made up of people who are just volunteers (i.e. all of you). 

Blocking spam is just a way of speaking, but spam is not really ever 
blocked. The only thing that can intelligently sort out spam from what is 
not spam is a human being, i.e. you and I when deleting the spam manually, 
which is what you do not want to continue doing.

Then what "could" be done is to employ software like SpamAssassin, as 
explained above. There are additional software/processes that could be 
applied, one of which (just one, no more) I know enough not to want it in 
the aktivix server/s.

These pieces of software are programs, implemented in machines. No 
intelligent activity here, apart from the coding done by the programmers. 
But once being implemented, it is just a process. All this to explain that 
"blocking spam" is not such. Think of the mail server as if it was a 
shared house, your inbox as if it was your room. You, a human, sort out 
manually the emails that come into your room once they have come through 
the house door. The software is the system that controls how open is the 
house door. It is either completely open, which would be without any anti 
spam software, or it can be gradually turned, first with SpamAssassin, 
then with greylisting maybe... but the more you close a door, the more 
emails will be left out, and the more chances emails you do want to 
receive will be left out as well (these are usually called "false 
positive").

If the incoming door is too closed, then the mail users notice  that they 
are missing emails, and the natural reaction is to complain to the 
administrators of the door system. 

Personally I do not think that aktivix (i.e. us all) have the capacity to 
dedicate the more time and effort to offer the level of support that a 
further closing of the "door" would need in terms of monitoring or 
investigate false positives, complaints etc. In other words, I think the 
anti-spam measures in place are enough specially taking into account that 
we are giving ourselves mailboxes free of charge and advertising.

Which doesn't mean that you are left with your spam - I can recommend you 
use Thunderbird, but there are things that can be done on webmail too. And 
I'm sure there are many other ways of checking your email...

I hope this rant has not put you off from asking more questions :)

ana
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http://ana.aktivix.org