I see I opened the floodgates, but didn't get much of a solution. I would
however like to add two comments in response to the replies that were
posted.
First, I agree that many virus warnings are hoaxes or are so well publicised
that we don't need to echo the warnings on our lists, but I wouldn't be too
dogmatic about it. I sent a virus warning recently because one of our
subscribers was infected and had sent the virus to anyone who posted to the
list - when you get a virus from someone you know, you are more likely to be
suckered. I expect that we will see more and more cleverness in the way
viruses present themselves, and warnings are called for. Suppose you got a
message from Rospach or Berch warning of a security flaw in Majordomo, open
the enclosed patch - might not you feel just a slight temptation to open it?
Imagine what happens when a fisheries manager gets a message from someone in
his department with an attached Excel file containing corrections to the
latest landing statistics - I could forge that, you all could.
Second, the following warnings are common, and sometimes get sent to list
subscribers. There are lots of us in this boat, and no one has come up with
a good way to get system administrators to do A+ jobs. Our site is typical -
a major government laboratory whose internet connection is managed by the
national computing centre. Yeah, our configuration is not perfect. But we
are worried more about the fact that sometimes our mail server breaks down
and for over a week all mail is returned to the sender marked "user
unknown", or that our proxy server is so crummy that it is impossible to
obtain remote sensing images unless they are mailed to us on a CD. Imagine
the situation in our former colonies, like Angola and Mozambique. It just
isn't fair to say that if your site is not perfectly configured, we won't
talk to you.
I just think that we have to have a balance between spam-blocking and
communication. Right now it is communication that is on the losing end.
Bill Silvert
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Simicich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "William Silvert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, May 18, 2001 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: Spam Filters vs. Mailing Lists
> Hmmm, I just checked the address you sent from based on the received
lines.
> It does not have reverse DNS set up (there is no in-addr.arpa pointer, so
> gethostbyaddr() will not work). My servers won't accept direct e-mail
> from your server either. Tell the administrators of the major ipimar.pt
to
> get their act together and fix their configuration problems. The problem
> is at your end.
