• [spam subject elided] (fwd)

    From eamanu15@21:1/5 to All on Mon Dec 3 02:30:04 2018
    Dave,

    I think first of all, that you must take care the language used here. If
    you have the knowledge
    to avoid the spams, maybe you have to work on the solution, talking with DD instead "offer your
    services".

    El dom., 2 de dic. de 2018 a la(s) 22:10, Marvin Renich (mrvn@renich.org) escribió:

    * Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> [181202 17:58]:
    Have you idiots ever thought of implementing some simple anti-spam
    measures?
    I have offered my services (free) many times, but thus far have been ignored, so I can only assume that you lot are spam-supporters.

    Am I right? As it happens, I am in the middle of upgrading a Penguin
    box;
    all you have to do is say the word, and it'll run FreeBSD instead.

    First, calling people names on this list is not acceptable behavior.

    Second, you addressed the message to the list, not the list masters, so
    you just called everyone on this list an idiot, even though almost no
    one on this list has any direct control over the anti-spam measures in
    place. The list masters are unlikely to be subscribed to every Debian mailing list, as they are a relatively small group that administers all
    the official @lists.debian.org lists. To find their email address, go
    to https://lists.debian.org/ (and note they likely did not see any of
    your previous offers of help).

    Third, the list masters are professional and expert email
    administrators, and they volunteer their time to run the Debian mailing lists. Characterizing them as idiots is not only extremely rude, but as
    far from the truth as you can get.

    Fourth, calling someone names is not an effective way to get them to
    want to help you.

    Fifth, there are substantial anti-spam measures in place, as evidenced
    by the fact that extremely few spam messages actually get through.
    Without any anti-spam measures, you would not be able to find the
    legitimate email messages due to the quantity of spam.

    Sixth, if you go to https://lists.debian.org/debian-laptop/ and find the email, you can click on the "Report as spam" button. This is a big help
    to the list masters.

    Seventh, the list masters welcome suggestions for spamassassin rules
    (and other changes). There was a recent message on debian-devel@l.d.o
    giving a hint how to do that, but I'm not motivated to go find it for
    you. I believe it was last month; you can search the archives.

    Eighth, _why_ did you quote the spam message? If you have enough
    expertise in anti-spam measures to be offering your assistance, you
    ought to know that including the spam content in a legitimate email
    makes it much more difficult to train any Bayesian filters in place.

    ...Marvin



    --
    Arias Emmanuel
    http://eamanu.com
    Github/Gitlab; @eamanu
    Debian: @eamanu-guest

    <div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace;font-size:small">Dave, <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:
    monospace,monospace;font-size:small">I think first of all, that you must take care the language used here. If you have the knowledge <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace;font-size:small">to avoid the spams, maybe
    you have to work on the solution, talking with DD instead &quot;offer your</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:monospace,monospace;font-size:small"> services&quot;. <br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">El dom., 2 de dic.
    de 2018 a la(s) 22:10, Marvin Renich (<a href="mailto:mrvn@renich.org">mrvn@renich.org</a>) escribió:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;b
  • From Marvin Renich@21:1/5 to All on Mon Dec 3 02:20:01 2018
    * Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> [181202 17:58]:
    Have you idiots ever thought of implementing some simple anti-spam measures? I have offered my services (free) many times, but thus far have been
    ignored, so I can only assume that you lot are spam-supporters.

    Am I right? As it happens, I am in the middle of upgrading a Penguin box; all you have to do is say the word, and it'll run FreeBSD instead.

    First, calling people names on this list is not acceptable behavior.

    Second, you addressed the message to the list, not the list masters, so
    you just called everyone on this list an idiot, even though almost no
    one on this list has any direct control over the anti-spam measures in
    place. The list masters are unlikely to be subscribed to every Debian
    mailing list, as they are a relatively small group that administers all
    the official @lists.debian.org lists. To find their email address, go
    to https://lists.debian.org/ (and note they likely did not see any of
    your previous offers of help).

    Third, the list masters are professional and expert email
    administrators, and they volunteer their time to run the Debian mailing
    lists. Characterizing them as idiots is not only extremely rude, but as
    far from the truth as you can get.

    Fourth, calling someone names is not an effective way to get them to
    want to help you.

    Fifth, there are substantial anti-spam measures in place, as evidenced
    by the fact that extremely few spam messages actually get through.
    Without any anti-spam measures, you would not be able to find the
    legitimate email messages due to the quantity of spam.

    Sixth, if you go to https://lists.debian.org/debian-laptop/ and find the
    email, you can click on the "Report as spam" button. This is a big help
    to the list masters.

    Seventh, the list masters welcome suggestions for spamassassin rules
    (and other changes). There was a recent message on debian-devel@l.d.o
    giving a hint how to do that, but I'm not motivated to go find it for
    you. I believe it was last month; you can search the archives.

    Eighth, _why_ did you quote the spam message? If you have enough
    expertise in anti-spam measures to be offering your assistance, you
    ought to know that including the spam content in a legitimate email
    makes it much more difficult to train any Bayesian filters in place.

    ...Marvin

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  • From Marvin Renich@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 4 04:40:01 2018
    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 15:21]:
    How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks? 1
    month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years?

    The correct answer is "much longer than 25 years".

    At
    what point should constructive feedback yield to insults, and at what
    point should insults yield to violence?

    Never, to both parts of that question.

    If your answer to that last question is "never", then I suggest you
    study some history. ;-)

    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to
    violence that it becomes justifiable? Over an offer to help that was
    sent to the wrong place and was thus not answered? Sorry, that is just
    plain wrong.

    Alex:

    Many thanks to you and the rest of the listmaster team for the
    excellent work you do. And also for your calm response in the face of extremely rude and unfounded emails directed at you.

    ...Marvin

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  • From Jim Popovitch@21:1/5 to Marvin Renich on Tue Dec 4 06:00:01 2018
    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to
    violence that it becomes justifiable?  

    No, I'm saying lessons learned from History are to always be respected
    and not ignored.

    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was thus
    not answered?  

    Context, it's always important. The offerS have been given by several
    people, over several years, across several methods. I know Dave, I have
    a reasonable idea of how Dave would have make his first, second, third,
    fourth, fifth, and sixth offers to help. I can also imagine that it
    probably took Dave at least several years, of offering *free* help,
    before he blew a gasket at the continuance of a problem that he is very
    keenly aware of how to solve. I, on a parallel plane, have been
    advocating for improvements, and complaining about the spam problem, for several years now too. I'll make a prediction, nothing will improve and obvious spam will still leak through b.d.o. At some point though,
    receivers will start blocking b.d.o, they do it now selectively for some
    servers in the large outbound server farms of Hotmail, Google, AOL,
    etc., what's Debian going to do when their single outbound b.d.o server
    ends up listed on a few DNSBLs?

    Sorry, that is just plain wrong.

    Which part? The part about context mattering?

    -Jim P.


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  • From Imre Vida@21:1/5 to Jim Popovitch on Tue Dec 4 07:50:02 2018
    Guys,

    could you please just stop.
    The verbal attack was not justified - and can not be justified,
    even if there are/were some perceived problems.

    Human history is dominated by unfair aggression, but again:
    it does not and can not justify any aggression.

    Much appreciation to Debian and Debian-list maintainers
    for their dedicated and silent work - that we can use and
    enjoy their products!
    Many thanks,

    imre


    Jim Popovitch wrote on 2018/12/04 05:56:

    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to
    violence that it becomes justifiable?  

    No, I'm saying lessons learned from History are to always be respected
    and not ignored.

    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was thus
    not answered?  

    Context, it's always important. The offerS have been given by several people, over several years, across several methods. I know Dave, I have
    a reasonable idea of how Dave would have make his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth offers to help. I can also imagine that it
    probably took Dave at least several years, of offering *free* help,
    before he blew a gasket at the continuance of a problem that he is very keenly aware of how to solve. I, on a parallel plane, have been
    advocating for improvements, and complaining about the spam problem, for several years now too. I'll make a prediction, nothing will improve and obvious spam will still leak through b.d.o. At some point though,
    receivers will start blocking b.d.o, they do it now selectively for some servers in the large outbound server farms of Hotmail, Google, AOL,
    etc., what's Debian going to do when their single outbound b.d.o server
    ends up listed on a few DNSBLs?

    Sorry, that is just plain wrong.

    Which part? The part about context mattering?

    -Jim P.



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  • From Alexander Wirt@21:1/5 to Marvin Renich on Tue Dec 4 07:50:02 2018
    On Mon, 03 Dec 2018, Marvin Renich wrote:

    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 15:21]:
    How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks? 1
    month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years?

    The correct answer is "much longer than 25 years".
    He should at least wait until he gets its facts right. Afair/afaik there
    never was any offer to help or constructive help we received from him.

    Alex

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  • From Celejar@21:1/5 to Jim Popovitch on Tue Dec 4 14:00:01 2018
    On Mon, 03 Dec 2018 23:56:22 -0500
    Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> wrote:

    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to
    violence that it becomes justifiable?  

    No, I'm saying lessons learned from History are to always be respected
    and not ignored.

    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was thus
    not answered?  

    Context, it's always important. The offerS have been given by several

    ...

    Sorry, that is just plain wrong.

    Which part? The part about context mattering?

    Maybe the part implying that revolutionary violence can be appropriate
    against listmasters who provide a free service - which you are
    perfectly free to opt out of - simply because they fail (in your view)
    to provide better anti-spam measures?

    This is what you wrote:

    How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks? 1
    month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years? At
    what point should constructive feedback yield to insults, and at what
    point should insults yield to violence?

    If your answer to that last question is "never", then I suggest you
    study some history. ;-)

    Celejar

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  • From Jim Popovitch@21:1/5 to Celejar on Tue Dec 4 16:10:02 2018
    On Tue, 2018-12-04 at 07:53 -0500, Celejar wrote:
    On Mon, 03 Dec 2018 23:56:22 -0500 Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com>
    wrote:

    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to violence that it becomes justifiable?  

    No, I'm saying lessons learned from History are to always be
    respected
    and not ignored.

    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was
    thus
    not answered?  

    Context, it's always important.  The offerS have been given by
    several

    ...

    Sorry, that is just plain wrong.

    Which part?  The part about context mattering?

    Maybe the part implying that revolutionary violence can be appropriate against listmasters who provide a free service - which you are
    perfectly free to opt out of - simply because they fail (in your view)
    to provide better anti-spam measures?

    This is what you wrote:

    How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks?  1 month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 25 years?   At what point should constructive feedback yield to insults, and at
    what point should insults yield to violence?

    If your answer to that last question is "never", then I suggest you
    study some history.  ;-)

    Celejar


    What I wrote in no way implies that "revolutionary violence can be
    appropriate against listmasters who provide a free service", today.
    HOWEVER, I do believe that, after some period of time, indignant words,
    public protests, and eventually (as we see all the time with major spam operations) LEO takedowns, become legitimate and appropriate actions
    against listmasters, and any sender, who continues to flagrantly avoid
    best practices. There are many many other lists, outside of Debian,
    that have many many more members, that don't have the pervasive and
    perpetual spam problems that the Debian lists do.

    -Jim P.


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  • From Marvin Renich@21:1/5 to All on Tue Dec 4 17:40:01 2018
    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 23:57]:
    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to
    violence that it becomes justifiable?  

    No, I'm saying lessons learned from History are to always be respected
    and not ignored.

    That's not what you wrote. Here it is:

    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 15:21]:
    How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks?
    ======
    [snip] At
    what point should constructive feedback yield to insults, and at what
    ======
    point should insults yield to violence?
    ======

    If your answer to that last question is "never", then I suggest you
    study some history. ;-)

    You asked "should", which is asking what is appropriate. History can
    rarely be used to answer that question. And you should never respect
    wrong historical choices (for the definition of "respect" meaning
    "esteem"). If by "respect" you meant "keep in mind", that has
    absolutely nothing to do with "should".

    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 23:57]:
    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was thus
    not answered?  

    Context, it's always important. The offerS have been given by several people, over several years, across several methods.

    What offers? I have seen very few offers from anyone, and I have been subscribed to this list for a long time. Can you give a URL from the
    archives at lists.debian.org?

    I know Dave, I have
    a reasonable idea of how Dave would have make his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth offers to help. I can also imagine that it
    probably took Dave at least several years, of offering *free* help,
    before he blew a gasket at the continuance of a problem that he is very keenly aware of how to solve.

    Searching this list's archive specifically for "horsfall", I get 57
    matches, 24 that are from him. Of those 24, this is the only other one
    related to spam:

    https://lists.debian.org/debian-laptop/2018/01/msg00001.html
    I didn't know that spamming was allowed on this list; can I spam too?

    That doesn't sound like a constructive offer to help. Your "reasonable
    idea" of how he would make his first through sixth offers to help does
    not match the evidence in the archive.

    I, on a parallel plane, have been
    advocating for improvements, and complaining about the spam problem, for several years now too.

    How about giving real help instead of complaining?

    I'll make a prediction, nothing will improve and
    obvious spam will still leak through b.d.o.

    It appears that you have no idea how much spam is actually being
    rejected compared to the very few that actually make it through. You
    will never get both 0 false positives and 0 false negatives on any
    sizeable mailing list.

    Or perhaps you do have an idea, you just have an unrealistic expectation
    that _zero_ spam getting through is easily attainable.

    Sorry, that is just plain wrong.

    Which part? The part about context mattering?

    Huh? Your irrelevant and unsubstantiated remark about context was in
    your reply to that message, not in the message to which that was a
    reply. Talk about ignoring context! My comment was given precisely in context, but I'll copy it here just to try to be clear:

    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to
    violence that it becomes justifiable?  
    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was thus
    not answered?  

    To rephrase that, your message gave a clear implication that history was
    a justification for why "never" was not the correct answer to "at what
    point should insults yield to violence?", and I was saying that "never"
    is, indeed, the correct answer to that question.

    ...Marvin

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  • From Jim Popovitch@21:1/5 to Marvin Renich on Tue Dec 4 18:30:01 2018
    On Tue, 2018-12-04 at 11:30 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 23:57]:
    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to violence that it becomes justifiable?  

    No, I'm saying lessons learned from History are to always be
    respected and not ignored.

    That's not what you wrote.  Here it is:

    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 15:21]:
    How long should Dave wait out the problem before insulting folks?

               ======
    [snip] At
    what point should constructive feedback yield to insults, and at
    what

                 ======
    point should insults yield to violence?

            ======

    If your answer to that last question is "never", then I suggest you
    study some history.  ;-)

    You asked "should", which is asking what is appropriate.  History can rarely be used to answer that question.  And you should never respect
    wrong historical choices (for the definition of "respect" meaning "esteem").  If by "respect" you meant "keep in mind", that has
    absolutely nothing to do with "should".

    You do a sweet copy+paste effort and totally ignored the trailing
    smiley, how interesting.


    * Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> [181203 23:57]:
    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was
    thus not answered?  

    Context, it's always important.  The offerS have been given by
    several people, over several years, across several methods.

    What offers?  I have seen very few offers from anyone, and I have been subscribed to this list for a long time.  Can you give a URL from the archives at lists.debian.org?

    I doubt those offers are on the public list archives. Dave? The ones I
    made were here on-list yesterday, or via private email, or over on
    #debian and #postfix.

    I know Dave, I have a reasonable idea of how Dave would have make
    his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth offers to
    help.  I can also imagine that it probably took Dave at least
    several years, of offering *free* help, before he blew a gasket at
    the continuance of a problem that he is very keenly aware of how to
    solve.

    Searching this list's archive specifically for "horsfall", I get 57
    matches, 24 that are from him.  Of those 24, this is the only other
    one related to spam:

      https://lists.debian.org/debian-laptop/2018/01/msg00001.html
      I didn't know that spamming was allowed on this list; can I spam
    too?

    That doesn't sound like a constructive offer to help.  Your
    "reasonable idea" of how he would make his first through sixth offers
    to help does not match the evidence in the archive.

    Your unreasonable assumption falls short in believing that constructive
    offers must be made in public archives.

    I, on a parallel plane, have been advocating for improvements, and complaining about the spam problem, for several years now too.

    How about giving real help instead of complaining?

    I gave real help, and Dave is offering real help. Outside of Dave and
    me there are many others who can and (hopefully) have offered real help.
    The problem is real help isn't very welcomed. The status quo is
    comfortable with the way things are (it could be better, it could be
    worse). I offered real help yesterday (Enable DNSBLs in Spamassasin),
    and someone else offered rpsamd advice... are you holding your breath
    waiting for the listmasters to implement either of those?

    I'll make a prediction, nothing will improve and
    obvious spam will still leak through b.d.o.

    It appears that you have no idea how much spam is actually being
    rejected compared to the very few that actually make it through.  You
    will never get both 0 false positives and 0 false negatives on any
    sizeable mailing list.

    I run mailinglists that don't have that problem, and there are many
    other much bigger mailinglists that don't have the those issues. Across
    the board of technical mailing lists (NANOG, DNS Ops, MailOp, Bind,
    Outages) that I'm on, or have been on, it is only the Debian mailing
    lists that perpetually bleed spam.

    Or perhaps you do have an idea, you just have an unrealistic
    expectation that _zero_ spam getting through is easily attainable.

    I think you have a false impression of what the end goal should be , you
    seem too willing to accept some level of spam (status quo?). Zero spam
    *is* done by many other mailing list operators.

    Sorry, that is just plain wrong.

    Which part?  The part about context mattering?

    Huh?  Your irrelevant and unsubstantiated remark about context was in
    your reply to that message, not in the message to which that was a reply.  Talk about ignoring context!  My comment was given precisely
    in context, but I'll copy it here just to try to be clear:

    On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 22:33 -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Are you saying that because others have, in the past, resorted to violence that it becomes justifiable?  
    Over an offer to help that was sent to the wrong place and was
    thus not answered?  

    To rephrase that, your message gave a clear implication that history
    was a justification for why "never" was not the correct answer to 
    "at what point should insults yield to violence?", and I was saying
    that> "never" is, indeed, the correct answer to that question.

    "Never" is the *desired* answer but history has shown that violence is
    often necessary to bring about real change. Those two concepts are
    mutually exclusive.

    -Jim P.


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  • From Lou@21:1/5 to Jim Popovitch on Tue Dec 4 20:10:02 2018
    Two observations:

    1. By my count, post "about spam" have generated more clutter than the
    spam I have observed. Spam here are noticeably less than on other BB,
    email list, forums I monitor/moderate.

    2. One disadvantages of "zero spam" in a BB/mail-list with world wide
    members is the high prospect of false positives.  The possibility of penalizing a contributor based on their ISP or neighborhood would be
    counter productive.

    JMHO

    Lou

    On 12/4/2018 10:21 AM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
    I think you have a false impression of what the end goal should be , you
    seem too willing to accept some level of spam (status quo?). Zero spam *is* done by many other mailing list operators.

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  • From Jim Popovitch@21:1/5 to Lou on Tue Dec 4 20:20:01 2018
    On Tue, 2018-12-04 at 11:28 -0700, Lou wrote:
    Two observations:

    1. By my count, post "about spam" have generated more clutter than
    the spam I have observed.

    Ack. But maybe this time the outcome will be productive.

    Spam here are noticeably less than on other BB, email list, forums I monitor/moderate.

    BB == Bulletin Board? Web based bulletin boards and forums? That's a
    whole other can of worms^Wspam, but is a legitimate problem worth of
    attention (have you looked into implementing plugins that support some
    of the DBLs that help fight that plague?

    2. One disadvantages of "zero spam" in a BB/mail-list with world wide  members is the high prospect of false positives.  The possibility of  penalizing a contributor based on their ISP or neighborhood would be  counter productive.

    Can you cite an example where a legitimate contributor's email was
    blocked based on their ISP or neighborhood where 1) the ISP wasn't
    voluntarily listed in the PBL, and 2) the "neighborhood" was not a known cesspool of spammers?

    -Jim P.
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  • From Lou@21:1/5 to Jim Popovitch on Tue Dec 4 22:30:01 2018
    This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
    On 12/4/2018 12:14 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
    2. One disadvantages of "zero spam" in a BB/mail-list with world wide
    members is the high prospect of false positives.  The possibility of
    penalizing a contributor based on their ISP or neighborhood would be
    counter productive.
    Can you cite an example where a legitimate contributor's email was
    blocked based on their ISP or neighborhood where 1) the ISP wasn't voluntarily listed in the PBL, and 2) the "neighborhood" was not a known cesspool of spammers?

    -Jim P.

    Of course not! Members of any list would not see a blocked contributor,
    and therefor not be in a position to evaluate their legitimacy.

    But personally I have been blocked by HotMail, because my host/VSP with (un-shared) fixed IP is in a "Bad IP block."  A quick review of
    SpamCop/TALOS spamassassin, and others didn't find a listing for the /16
    block in question.  The closest I (or anyone using email at one of the
    domains I  manage/host) come to spam is as treasure of a non-profit.  I
    send financial reports to the other board members ~~ one board member
    has a HotMail account. So who knows why my IP was blocked until I
    objected. It is anecdotal, yet a citation you requested.

    But enough clutter.

    Lou


    <html>
    <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
    </head>
    <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    <p>
    </p>
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/4/2018 12:14 PM, Jim Popovitch
    wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite"
    cite="mid:1543950855.10281.1.camel@k4vqc.com">
    <blockquote type="cite" style="color: #000000;">
    <pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">2. One disadvantages of "zero spam" in a BB/mail-list with world wide 
    members is the high prospect of false positives.  The possibility of  penalizing a contributor based on their ISP or neighborhood would be 
    counter productive.
    </pre>
    </blockquote>
    <pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Can you cite an example where a legitimate contributor's email was
    blocked based on their ISP or neighborhood where 1) the ISP wasn't
    voluntarily listed in the PBL, and 2) the "neighborhood" was not a known cesspool of spammers?

    -Jim P.</pre>
    </blockquote>
    <p>Of course not! Members of any list would not see a blocked
    contributor, and therefor not be in a position to evaluate their
    legitimacy.<br>
    </p>
    <p>But personally I have been blocked by HotMail, because my
    host/VSP with (un-shared) fixed IP is in a "Bad IP block."  A
    quick review of SpamCop/TALOS spamassassin, and others didn't find
    a listing for the /16 block in question.  The closest I (or anyone
    using email at one of the domains I  manage/host) come to spam is
    as treasure of a non-profit.  I send financial reports to the
    other board members ~~ one board member has a HotMail account. So
    who knows why my IP was blocked until I objected. It is anecdotal,
    yet a citation you requested. <br>
    </p>
    <p>But enough clutter.</p>
    <p>Lou<br>
    </p>
    </body>
    </html>

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  • From Jim Popovitch@21:1/5 to Lou on Tue Dec 4 22:50:01 2018
    On Tue, 2018-12-04 at 14:23 -0700, Lou wrote:
    On 12/4/2018 12:14 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
    2. One disadvantages of "zero spam" in a BB/mail-list with world
    wide 
    members is the high prospect of false positives.  The possibility
    of 
    penalizing a contributor based on their ISP or neighborhood would
    be 
    counter productive.

    Can you cite an example where a legitimate contributor's email was
    blocked based on their ISP or neighborhood where 1) the ISP wasn't voluntarily listed in the PBL, and 2) the "neighborhood" was not a
    known
    cesspool of spammers?

    -Jim P.

    Of course not! Members of any list would not see a blocked
    contributor, and therefor not be in a position to evaluate their
    legitimacy.

    So you have no example of anyone other than yourself being blocked,
    correct?

    But personally I have been blocked by HotMail, because my host/VSP
    with (un-shared) fixed IP is in a "Bad IP block."  A quick review of SpamCop/TALOS spamassassin, and others didn't find a listing for the
    /16 block in question. 
    The closest I (or anyone using email at one of the domains I 
    manage/host) come to spam is as treasure of a non-profit.  I send
    financial reports to the other board members ~~ one board member has
    a HotMail account. So who knows why my IP was blocked until I
    objected. It is anecdotal, yet a citation you requested. 
    But enough clutter.
    Lou

    Hotmail/Microsoft are super well known for publishing what it takes to
    get email delivered to their user's inboxes. They are also some of the
    most responsive in dealing with deliverability problems (look in the
    MailOp archives if you don't believe me). You setup your JMRP account,
    and followed their instructions, in order to be permitted to deliver to
    their users, right?

    -Jim P.
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  • From Helen McCall@21:1/5 to Jim Popovitch on Wed Dec 5 01:40:01 2018
    On Tue, 04 Dec 2018 16:47:26 -0500
    Jim Popovitch <jim@k4vqc.com> wrote:

    On Tue, 2018-12-04 at 14:23 -0700, Lou wrote:
    On 12/4/2018 12:14 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
    2. One disadvantages of "zero spam" in a BB/mail-list with world
    wide 
    members is the high prospect of false positives.  The
    possibility of 
    penalizing a contributor based on their ISP or neighborhood
    would be 
    counter productive.

    Can you cite an example where a legitimate contributor's email was blocked based on their ISP or neighborhood where 1) the ISP wasn't voluntarily listed in the PBL, and 2) the "neighborhood" was not a
    known
    cesspool of spammers?

    -Jim P.

    Of course not! Members of any list would not see a blocked
    contributor, and therefor not be in a position to evaluate their legitimacy.

    So you have no example of anyone other than yourself being blocked,
    correct?

    I have been blocked in this way when I was with a previous ISP. Also a
    friend who ran a fan-email-list found a number of the fans blocked who
    she knew and so learnt about it when talking to them.

    I am puzzled by this thread because I have been using Debian for almost
    23 years now, and been subscribing to various of these lists all
    through that time and have only witnessed a steady decrease in spam on
    these lists, with hardly any at all these days. From my point of view;
    all those involved in running these lists do a very good job indeed. As
    a rather ancient old age pensioner, I greatly appreciate the wonderful
    work done by all these volunteers.

    I don't know if the debian-laptop list has had more than its fair share
    of spam, because I only joined this list this year after a friend gave
    me a laptop which proved a little tricky to install any useable
    operating system on. I am more used to installing Debian onto
    workstations I've built myself out of bits from discarded broken
    computers people have given me. It has always been far easier to install
    Debian on machines I've built myself.

    Helen McCall

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  • From Rich Kulawiec@21:1/5 to Marvin Renich on Sat Dec 15 15:20:01 2018
    On Sun, Dec 02, 2018 at 08:10:19PM -0500, Marvin Renich wrote:
    Third, the list masters are professional and expert email
    administrators, and they volunteer their time to run the Debian mailing lists. Characterizing them as idiots is not only extremely rude, but as
    far from the truth as you can get.

    The results -- as measured by the unacceptable quantity of spam that
    gets through to the various debian-* lists -- do not suggest that
    they're being run by professionals/experts. I would rate their
    performance as a "D", no better.

    Moreover, a great deal of the spam that gets through repeatedly
    comes from the same domains/hosts/networks/senders, indicating
    that list administrators are not doing what they should do --
    which is to individually analyze every FN and figure out if measures
    can be put in place to stop the next occurence. (This isn't
    always possible. However, having done this very exercise on
    a substantial corpus of debian-* list spam, I can attest that
    it works in the majority of cases present here.) (Why did I do this?
    Because one of the things I've learned in decades of running mailing
    lists is that spammers who target one are likely to target another.
    It's thus wise to pre-emptively block them whenever possible. Getting
    hit once from a spammer is forgiveable. Getting hit repeatedly when
    you could have easily stopped them is not.)

    This doesn't mean that the people running this list aren't hardworking volunteers. I'll take your word that they are. That's a good thing.
    But they're not even remotely close to professionals/experts, because professionals/experts simply would not allow this miserably poor
    performance to persist for years at a time.

    Dave's volunteered to help. So have I -- and like him, I never received
    any response. One would think that people who are obviously struggling
    to understand and implement the rudiments of antispam best practices
    would be glad to receive free consulting services from people who've
    been there and done that for a *very* long time.

    Among the steps that should be taken, and this is off the top of my
    head so will clearly be incomplete:

    1. Dump smartlist, switch to latest revision of Mailman 2.x.
    2. Configure Mailman to hold mesages from nonsubscribers.
    3. Process hold queue, whitelist/blacklist as necessary,
    4. Implement Spamhaus DROP and EDROP at perimeter.
    5. Implement Spamhaus Zen DBSBL in MTA.
    6. Install simple pattern matching for well-known spammer
    domains/LHS/senders/hosts in the MTA. Make sure
    it's under revision control.
    7. Implement DNS checks in the MTA (including enforcing FCrDNS,
    enforcing valid HELO/EHLO, etc.)
    8. Install pattern matching for dynamic subdomains in the MTA.
    9. Add the usual malware/phish/ratware pattern matches in the MTA.

    Steps 2, 6 and 7 would suffice to stop a lot of the spam that makes
    it way through to the debian-* lists. Not all. But a lot.

    You didn't like Dave's tone. You probably won't like mine either.
    You can either focus on that, or you can start trying to learn and
    do better, for the sake of Debian project/community/ecosystem.

    ---rsk

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  • From Rich Kulawiec@21:1/5 to Jim Popovitch on Fri Apr 19 14:10:01 2019
    On Mon, Dec 03, 2018 at 11:56:22PM -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
    Context, it's always important. The offerS have been given by several people, over several years, across several methods. I know Dave, I have
    a reasonable idea of how Dave would have make his first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth offers to help. I can also imagine that it
    probably took Dave at least several years, of offering *free* help,
    before he blew a gasket at the continuance of a problem that he is very keenly aware of how to solve. I, on a parallel plane, have been
    advocating for improvements, and complaining about the spam problem, for several years now too. I'll make a prediction, nothing will improve and obvious spam will still leak through b.d.o.

    As it turns out, this prediction was entirely accurate. Senior experts
    in the field such as Jim and Dave and myself have repeatedly offered to
    help, and the response has been (pretty much) excuses and whining.

    Meanwhile, spam that is trivially easy to block permanently continues
    to flow through numerous debian-* mailing lists. (By "trivial" I mean
    can be blocked with one line of typing. I've collated a list of about
    175 domains that should be permanently blacklisted in the MTA because
    they've repeatedly hit multiple mailing lists since 2015. It took less
    than five minutes to create that list. This is of course not a total
    solution but it would take a substantial bite out of the problem, and
    that, in turn, would make it easier to focus on what's left.)

    The negligence and incompetence on display here is damaging the Debian
    project -- and there's really no excuse for it. Running mailing lists
    that are nearly entirely free from spam is a well-understood practice, and anyone who can't handle that should step aside in favor of those who can.

    ---rsk

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