On 29 Feb 2004 at 9:03, Michael Edwards wrote: > [David H. Bailey, about white-list spam:] > > >The person who is responsible won't get your angry note and can't > >respond to your demand to stop it, since it is an automated e-mail > >barrier that nothing can pass unless the originator follows the > >dictates. > > I think people who do this are being rude and arrogant. . .
I just think they are being stupid. Or they are using a whitelisting service that is stupid. No one has as right to have their email messages received and read by anyone else. But in this case, the problem is that the person who has the block up has said "YES, I WANT TO RECEIVE MESSAGES FROM THE FINALE LIST" and then has not set up the whitelist for that appropriately. Perhaps that is because the whitelist software is not able to be configured to handle mailing list messages where the actual sender of the message (the listserv) is not in the FROM address. If that's the case, then it's very poor software and unsuitable to its purpose. > . . . They are > effectively saying, "My time is more important than yours, because I'm > going to waste everyone else's time in order to save some of my own". But why shouldn't they do just that? The problem here is that the whitelisting program is not recognizing the real sender of the messages, because the Finale list puts that in the TO: and not in the FROM: header. Remember how everyone has complained about replying to messages with the intent of replying onlist and having the messages end up sent only to the original poster? This is the VERY SAME PROBLEM. If the Reply-To were set to the mailing list address, probably the whitelist program would be able to get this right. The list already has Errors-To and Return-Path headers which should be used by any automated programs so we'd never have the endless loops that caused Henry to change the listserv to have the poster in the FROM instead of the listserv. I've said repeatedly that this ought to be changed, as have a number of people on the list, but our list owner chooses not to do so. This latest mess is a result of that decision not to change combined with misconfiguration of a whitelist service (or the inability of the whitelist to cope with mailing lists with headers like this). > The Orchestra List has also recently been plagued by automated > spam from > two individuals who do this (who never post, as far as I've noticed). > Some postings I made, I got an automated response from each of these > people. > Why should I enter information in the form they provide? - > especially when > I don't know how that information may be used, or to whom it may be > passed. And why should I *care* whether they get my messages, or > whether I go on their black list (which must be huge, too)? Well, you really oughtn't be getting this message at all because *you* haven't actually sent them any email. They should already have whitelisted the Finale list, though, and that should be getting through. There's really no way to know which explanation is causing the problem. > >Just expand your trash filter to include this new fool and let it go, > >there's nothing anybody except Henry Howey, as list-owner, can do > >about it. > > Well, would there be any future in asking Henry to do something > about it? > And maybe to bar posting from non-members? Most lists I'm on require > you to be a member in order to post messages. However, Henry seems to > want to leave things exactly as they are, although I haven't read that > he ever actually said so. But he just didn't make the requested > changes. The list is already configured to politely reject replies from non- subscribers. I sometimes accidentally post from a different email address, and the listserv sends me a polite note telling me what happened and saying that the list owner may approve the posting within 24 or 48 hours (or something like that). > Well, I think he did once say he favoured a liberal approach to > running the > list, and not to play the role of a heavy-handed moderator, policing > what people say. I agree with that - but perhaps there are a few > things that might beneficially be changed: such as barring non-member > posts (usually from spammers), . . . That's already in place. > . . . and maybe suspending the membership of > people who use spam filters that (ironically) spam the entire list, > until they adjust it not to do so. That should definitely be done. > You would think, if they insist on having a white list for > admissible > senders, they would surely add to their white list any mailing list > they subscribe to. My bet is that they already have done this and that the problem is that the whitelist software is configured to only look at FROM headers. That would be a safe assumption for every single mailing list I subscribe to *except* this one. And I have repeatedly argued that the current configuration (FROM as poster instead of the Finale list) is wrong. That configuration may very well be the cause of this current problem. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
