Hi, You all might have seen the spam post on this list from [email protected]. That is actually the *first* time since the creation of this list that a spammer has managed to get through. Sigh... Let me tell you a bit about what happened and what this list does to defend against spammers.
As you all know, the pvrusb2 list only allows posts from actual subscribers. This is the list's primary defense against spammers. Since this list isn't all that large (161 subscribers) I don't believe it's been tempting enough of a target for one of those pond scum spammers to expend the manual effort needed to subscribe first. And believe me, I have seen COUNTLESS attempts to spam this list using non-subscribed addresses. If a non-subscriber attempts to post, the list softare will bounce the message back to the sender with an apology about the requirement to subscribe first along with an explanation. So how did that post get onto the list? Well it's not a perfect system. Obviously a determined enough spammer could attempt to subscribe anyway and spew to the list. Were that to happen I'd ban him instantly, but unfortunately at least one such message would get through first. But that's not what actually happened here. The "only-subscribers-can-post" rule is not exactly bullet-proof. The mailing list software basically looks at the from: address and if it names a subscriber, the post is let through. Matt has been a subscriber to this list since 24-Jan-2007, and obviously he's been a good citizen that entire time. The headers would seem to suggest that the post likely came from elsewhere. So this is probably a case of the spammer joe-jobbing [email protected] and just getting lucky because he also happened to include the pvrusb2 posting address in his spew list. When I saw the spam message, I first just banned the address. But then I looked deeper and upon realizing he's been here for 3 years I concluded that this probably wasn't his fault. So for now I resubscribed him to the list but he's on moderation until I hear from him and get some assurance that it really wasn't his fault. Going forward in time, this is probably going to happen more. I really hope not, but it might. I already also run a grey list on isely.net, which also knocks the spam influx down *enormously*, but those scum-of-the-internet spammers will probably still get lucky every once in a while. If this starts to become a real problem, then I will react by putting the entire list on moderation, as a last manual defense against these jerks. That will be annoying, but the traffic level here is low enough that I think I can deal with it. Maybe somebody else might also help out and be a moderator, if it comes to that. Anyway, that I guess is a long way of saying sorry about what got posted and I'm doing my best to keep that under control. -Mike -- Mike Isely isely @ isely (dot) net PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8 _______________________________________________ pvrusb2 mailing list [email protected] http://www.isely.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pvrusb2
