From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 3 20:21:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA02005; Mon, 3 Jan 2000 20:06:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from unix1.sihope.com (unix1.sihope.com [209.98.16.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA01998 for ; Mon, 3 Jan 2000 20:05:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from DSL1123 (dsl-1-123.sihope.com [209.98.133.30]) by unix1.sihope.com (8.9.0/8.9.0) with SMTP id WAA26288 for ; Mon, 3 Jan 2000 22:17:29 -0600 (CST) Message-ID: <018901bf5669$42adbb60$1e8562d1@sihope.com> Reply-To: "Andrew P. Tasi" From: "Andrew P. Tasi" To: Subject: Thank you's; was 'Looking for a new list server' - no technical content Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000 22:07:46 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Please forgive the lack of technical content, but I would like to publicly thank several people that offered information, assistance, and hosting services when Esosoft abruptly decided to get out of majordomo hosting: -Brian Edmonds (my new majordomo ASP) -Jeremy Blackman (whose excellent Listar software I'm evaluating to possibly use on my server) -Nick Simicich (jeez, does he know his stuff or what!) -Rob Charles -Sharon Tucci -David B. Smith -Becky -Norbert Bollow -James M. Galvin ...and anybody I've foolishly forgotten. As a newbie, I was pleasantly surprised at the generosity of your feedback. With the assistance provided, I was able to very seamlessly leave Esosoft behind. Thank you all, and Happy New Year. Cheers, Andrew P. Tasi From list-managers-owner Tue Jan 4 03:12:37 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA05610; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 01:55:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.rdc1.wa.home.com (ha1.rdc1.wa.home.com [24.0.2.66]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA05603 for ; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 01:55:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from c542443-a ([24.9.50.49]) by mail.rdc1.wa.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.00 201-229-111) with ESMTP id <20000104100724.EEEG3520.mail.rdc1.wa.home.com@c542443-a> for ; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 02:07:24 -0800 Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20000104020202.009d7400@mail.fedwy1.wa.home.com> X-Sender: carriejl@mail.fedwy1.wa.home.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2000 02:05:53 -0800 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Carrie Lybecker Subject: Re: Thank you's; was 'Looking for a new list server' - no technical content In-Reply-To: <018901bf5669$42adbb60$1e8562d1@sihope.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:07 PM 1/3/00 -0600, you wrote: >As a newbie, I was pleasantly surprised at the generosity of your feedback. >With the assistance provided, I was able to very seamlessly leave Esosoft >behind. Thank you all, and Happy New Year. I would like to second that thanks for the generosity of all who have offered me help also. Carrie Lybecker From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 02:29:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA23989; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 02:25:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from pacific.net ([199.4.80.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA23980 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 02:25:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from tarycare (oak3b-61.pacific.net [209.209.2.61]) by pacific.net (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id CAA13176 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 02:36:35 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20000106013853.00996e90@mail.pacific.net> X-Sender: gcplistmonger@mail.pacific.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 01:54:45 -0800 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Robert Payne Subject: Majordomo Hosting ( Help ) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk My Majordomo host rolled over into Topica. The Topica service doesn't meet our club needs. I need help locating a new Majordomo host for our club of 330 plus We need a Majordomo server that will allow a monthly PDF news letter attachment of at least 1.0Mb Allow hassle free list management with replace list commands so I can run the list straight from the club data base. Is reliable, secure and not outrageously expensive. Just like the list I had at Esosoft Robert Payne From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 06:30:41 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA27731; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:23:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA27724 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:23:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id JAA00140 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:33:26 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:33:25 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi Folks, I've been doing a lot of looking at replacing my current majordomo installation with a new list manager. I'd been looking at majordomo2, mailman, and sympa - none of which seem quite right for my needs (virtual domains, making it easier for users to set up mailing lists). Lyris seems to do it all, but it costs serious dollars, and isn't open-source. EZMLM seems to do a lot of the right things, but requires switching to qmail. Has anybody gone through a transition from majordomo/sendmail to ezmlm/qmail? Can you comment on how hard it was, things to watch out for, whether it was worth it? Thanks very much, Miles Fidelman ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 07:00:43 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA27895; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:47:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA27887 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 06:47:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id PAA31464 ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:58:50 +0100 (MET) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:salaun@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id PAA30999 ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:58:50 +0100 Message-Id: <200001061458.PAA30999@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.3 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM cc: postmaster@aol.com Subject: aol.com not compliant with RFC 1893 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 15:58:50 +0100 From: Olivier Salaun - CRU Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi, We are developing a non-delivery reports analyzer for Sympa MLM. This module already extracts bouncing address and error status for more than 90% of "bounces". The goal is to provide information about bouncing addresses within a web interface (WWSympa) for list-owners. Analysis is mainly based on RFCs 1891-1894 defining a MIME extension for Delivery Status Notifications, allowing (automatic) identification of recipients and error status. RFC 1893 defines Mail System Status Codes to be used by MTAs. Eg: 5.1.1 => User unknown ; 5.2.2 => Mailbox full I found out that aol.com is not compatible with status codes as defined in RFC 1893. As you can see in the sample bellow, the transcript of session indicates a 'User Unkown' whereas "Status" field of the delivery-status indicates a Success (2.0.0). This completely alter the analysis of error reports ! Did anyone already observe such problems with other ISPs ? -------------- Olivier Salaün Here is a sample Delivery Status Notification : Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status; boundary="BOUNDARY" --BOUNDARY ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to xxx.mail.aol.com.: >>> RCPT To: <<< 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND 550 ... User unknown --BOUNDARY Content-Type: message/delivery-status Reporting-MTA: dns; listes.cru.fr Arrival-Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:22:43 +0100 (MET) Final-Recipient: rfc822; yyy@aol.com. Action: failed Status: 2.0.0 Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 250 OK --BOUNDARY Content-Type: text/rfc822-headers --BOUNDARY From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 07:15:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA28082; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 07:05:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from hen.scotland.net (phys-hen2.scotland.net [194.247.65.128]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA28075 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 07:05:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from [148.176.238.82] (helo=beckyvac) by hen.scotland.net with smtp (Exim 2.12 #2) id 126Edk-00028H-00; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:15:54 +0000 Message-ID: <04b301bf5858$bdcf29a0$0ceeb094@beckyvac> From: "Becky" To: "Robert Payne" , References: <4.2.0.58.20000106013853.00996e90@mail.pacific.net> Subject: Re: Majordomo Hosting ( Help ) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:14:24 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi Robert, Believe me when I say I sympathise. I was also at Esosoft and jumped ship three days after the Topica announcement. I moved to Halisp and have been pretty happy although there was a small probably right after the New Year. However support was good an it was straightened out quickly. They are at: http://www.halisp.net/halisp/mailprice.html Also you might recall the MLA list which was for list owners and run by Esosoft. This list was shut down the Esosoft one hour after the topica announcement. We tried to reach as many other list-owners as we could but only managed about 10%. The MLA people moved to a list called EUG at Onelist in order to provide support for each other. I would suggest that you join this list. Many of the members have gone with VS servers run by other list-owners who were with Esosoft and for the same price and very little hassle. Good Luck Becky From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 08:44:27 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA29182; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:40:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from dragoncat.net (herne.dragoncat.net [216.122.4.136]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA29173 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:40:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost) by dragoncat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA31765; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:51:44 -0800 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:51:44 -0800 (PST) From: JT To: Miles Fidelman cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > I've been doing a lot of looking at replacing my current majordomo > installation with a new list manager. I'd been looking at majordomo2, > mailman, and sympa - none of which seem quite right for my needs > (virtual domains, making it easier for users to set up mailing lists). You might consider looking at Listar as well (http://www.listar.org/) It would take a little work by the site admin to get it set up so that users could set up their own lists, but it should be doable. --JT -- [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 08:59:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA29291; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:50:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from isrv3.isc.org (isrv3.isc.org [204.152.184.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA29276 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:50:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from bb.rc.vix.com (bb.rc.vix.com [204.152.187.11]) by isrv3.isc.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) via ESMTP id JAA03027; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:02:33 -0800 (PST) env-from (Peter.Losher@nominum.com) Received: from localhost (plosher@localhost) by bb.rc.vix.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) via ESMTP id JAA05653; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:02:33 -0800 (PST) env-from (Peter.Losher@nominum.com) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:02:32 -0800 (PST) From: Peter Losher To: Miles Fidelman cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > EZMLM seems to do a lot of the right things, but requires switching to > qmail. I would also suggest looking at Listar (http://www.listar.org/) It does what you are looking for in your message, and it's MTA independent (I used it under Sendmail before going to Postfix and Listar works beautifully under both MTA's) And it's open source :) Best Wishes -Peter (A satisfied user) | Peter Losher | SysAdmin - Nominum, Inc. | Peter.Losher@nominum.com | From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 09:30:02 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA29810; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:26:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA29803 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:26:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA03195; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 12:36:17 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 12:36:16 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: Peter Losher cc: Miles Fidelman , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk JT and Peter Losher both suggested I look at Listar. To which I ask two followup questions: - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with the virtual user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres) - is that correct? - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do everything automagically - again, is this correct? Thanks, Miles ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 10:32:19 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA00391; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 10:01:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA00384 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 10:01:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 1052835 invoked by uid 3995); 6 Jan 2000 18:13:08 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14452.56116.763300.426540@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:13:08 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Sill To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: > >Has anybody gone through a transition from majordomo/sendmail to >ezmlm/qmail? Can you comment on how hard it was, things to watch out for, >whether it was worth it? ezmlm (with the ezmlm-idx add-on) makes Majordomo look like a bad hack. Likewise for qmail vs. sendmail. I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I think ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, reliability, and manageability, and it's well worth the effort to switch. I recommend installing ezmlm+qmail on your existing list server (just don't install qmail-smtpd (on port 25) or qmail's "sendmail"). That'll allow you to play with qmail and ezmlm without interfering with your majordomo+sendmail setup. Once you've migrated the lists to ezmlm, you can turn off sendmail and install qmail-smtpd. Painless and low risk. See: http://Web.InfoAve.Net/~dsill/lwq.html For help installing qmail. -Dave From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 11:29:49 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA01347; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:21:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from dragoncat.net (herne.dragoncat.net [216.122.4.136]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA01337 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:21:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost) by dragoncat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA32494; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:44 -0800 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:44 -0800 (PST) From: JT To: Miles Fidelman cc: Peter Losher , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with the virtual > user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres) - is > that correct? Yes, but that could be handled by a wrapper script which when invoked set up the virtual domain files for the MTA, set up the config file for the virual host for listar, invoked listar -newlist with that correct virtual host config file, and then put the output of that in the right form for the MTA aliases file. > - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with > qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global > alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do > everything automagically - again, is this correct? I don't know anything personally about qmail, so I will leave that to someone else to answer. EZMLM most certainly does some things automagically, but that's because it's part and parcel with qmail and unlike listar won't work with anything but (or so I am given to understand). --JT [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 11:44:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA01405; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:26:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA01398 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:26:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 022B8AF89B; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:47:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA20765; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:26 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:25 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Olivier Salaun - CRU Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM, postmaster@aol.com Subject: Re: aol.com not compliant with RFC 1893 In-Reply-To: <200001061458.PAA30999@home.cru.fr> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Olivier Salaun - CRU wrote: > I found out that aol.com is not compatible with status codes as > defined in RFC 1893. As you can see in the sample bellow, the > transcript of session indicates a 'User Unkown' whereas "Status" > field of the delivery-status indicates a Success (2.0.0). This > completely alter the analysis of error reports ! > > Did anyone already observe such problems with other ISPs ? Yes; welcome to my personal hell. After discovering that /only/ Sendmail actually implements the RFC1893 spec completely correctly, I gave up and wrote a temporary method for Listar that just parses certain specific bounce formats, and then tries to determine the information if it is not a bounce format it recognizes. I am currently trying to come up with a much more general way that will work with the busted MIME information I have seen in several bounce messages. I would fold that parser into Listar again, but I would also be happy to work with others to make a bounce parser that is more general-purpose and could be folded into other packages as well. -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 11:59:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA01484; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA01477 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id AEF99AF89B; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:54:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA20768; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:40:44 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:40:43 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Miles Fidelman Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with the virtual > user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres) > is that correct? This is true for pretty much anything that is MTA-independent. Listar does generate the data for you, though, and you can just paste it into the appropriate file. I have all my Listar aliases in a 'listar.aliases' file, and so when I make a new list, I just do: listar -newlist mylist >> listar.aliases And the new aliases are added properly, and then I just rebuild the aliases file. This works for qmail using the Sendmail-compatible aliases module, as well. > - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with > qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global > alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do > everything automagically - again, is this correct? Listar does not run as root; in fact, the code checks and actively demotes itself back down to lose root permissions if you try to run it as root, logging a warning. As a result, though, the .qmail- files cannot be placed in the ~alias directory for qmail, if you tell Listar to create them. This means you have to become root and copy them over to the qmail global aliases directory... but that is a matter of a 'cp' command. :) ezmlm can do everything automagically because it links directly into the mailserver. Listar, the goal was to not tie it to any one package. :) The place where ezmlm beats everything else, hands down, is that individual users can create their own ezmlm lists in their own directories, since they can create per-user aliases. Listar could probably be made to work with qmail per-user aliases (or the Postfix delimited-forward files, for that matter) but would need to be modified to run as the user; that is something on the todo list already. -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 13:02:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA02597; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 12:48:37 -0800 (PST) Received: from dnvrpop3.dnvr.uswest.net (dnvrpop3.dnvr.uswest.net [206.196.128.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA02583 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 12:48:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 14847 invoked by alias); 6 Jan 2000 21:00:34 -0000 Delivered-To: fixup-list-managers@GreatCircle.COM@fixme Received: (qmail 14831 invoked by uid 0); 6 Jan 2000 21:00:34 -0000 Received: from mp13.roidirect.com (HELO gesche) (209.180.241.13) by dnvrpop3.dnvr.uswest.net with SMTP; 6 Jan 2000 21:00:34 -0000 From: "Marsha Petry" To: Subject: experiences with mail merge and scheduling in MLMs Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:46:09 -0700 Message-ID: <001301bf5887$10278d40$0df1b4d1@roidirect.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 In-Reply-To: Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I've only been on this list for a short time, so please feel free to redirect me to another list if this is off-topic for this list... I'm looking for an MLM (or alternatives would be considered) that could handle the following: 1. scheduling sends of moderated messages (ie send out message x at 1am, messages y,z at 2am etc...). This one I can find in most MLMs in varying forms but I also need this: 2. mail merge capability. I prefer to be able to send a message template, a control file, and a data file to a "merger" that would make substitutions from the data file into the message template based on directions from the control file. Extracting the data from a database would be another option. Anybody have some experiences in this area as to what would be a good MLM for these needs? I've looked at Majordomo, Listar, Sympa, Listproc, ezmlm, Listserv (and unless I've missed some documentation on the others Listserv is the closest to what I need, and that's what I may opt for, though it's pretty pricey). If no MLM fits my needs, any suggestions on what open source code might be the best to look at as far as modifying for my needs? Someone on the ezmlm list suggested modifying qmail for the mail merge feature - sounds OK. Any other experiences? Thanks in advance for your help. Marsha Petry mpetry@uswest.net From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 13:16:32 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA02901; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:13:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA02893 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:13:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA07275 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:23:24 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:23:24 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > The place where ezmlm beats everything else, hands down, is that > individual users can create their own ezmlm lists in their own > directories, since they can create per-user aliases. Listar could > probably be made to work with qmail per-user aliases (or the Postfix > delimited-forward files, for that matter) but would need to be modified to > run as the user; that is something on the todo list already. this is more along the lines I've been looking for - any idea when this might make its way into listar? Miles ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 13:29:53 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA02859; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:08:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA02852 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:08:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA07176 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:18:31 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:18:31 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Brian, Thanks very much for the reply. It's sounding more and more like a switch to qmail and ezmlm is in the cards. A few followup questions: > First, the switch to qmail - it alone is well worth it, even if you stick > with majordomo. Are there any gotchas I should watch out for, and/or any suggestions for a smooth transition - first from sendmail to qmail (while keeping my majordomo lists functional) and then from majordomo to ezmlm? Unfortunately, I have to do this on a single, leased host that's supporting ongoing operations - ideally, I'd like to figure out a way to run both systems in parallel and do a rolling cutover domain-by-domain. Thanks again, Miles ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 15:17:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA04063; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:05:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA04053 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:05:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7CB4FAF89B; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:27:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA20816; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:13:18 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:13:17 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Marsha Petry Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: experiences with mail merge and scheduling in MLMs In-Reply-To: <001301bf5887$10278d40$0df1b4d1@roidirect.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Marsha Petry wrote: > Anybody have some experiences in this area as to what would be a good MLM > for these needs? I've looked at Majordomo, Listar, Sympa, Listproc, ezmlm, > Listserv (and unless I've missed some documentation on the others Listserv > is the closest to what I need, and that's what I may opt for, though it's > pretty pricey). Listserv does what you need out-of-box, though it can be a royal nightmare to set up that way at times and is a bit pricey, as you note. I /think/ Lyris can also do this, and is probably slightly less pricey. > If no MLM fits my needs, any suggestions on what open source code might be > the best to look at as far as modifying for my needs? Someone on the ezmlm > list suggested modifying qmail for the mail merge feature - sounds OK. Any > other experiences? Well, for my own part, I can suggest Listar (surprise) for modification simply because the whole thing is based around a dynamic and extendable architecture. Writing a 'mailmerge.lpm' to plug-in could cover your need there fairly well, though you will then have to send each message separately... not /as/ bad as it could be, though, if you are running qmail (as it would seem). Listar already has hooks for per-user message modification, but nothing implements functionality on those hooks yet; the mail merge concept would be one that could make use of that. Of course, I will readily admit that my viewpoint is biased; JT and I wrote Listar that way specifically so we could add new features (or other people could) as needed without having to change the core code. -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 16:31:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA05536; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:10:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA05529 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:10:15 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 26505 invoked by uid 50); 7 Jan 2000 00:22:20 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? References: In-Reply-To: Miles Fidelman's message of "Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:18:31 -0500 (EST)" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 06 Jan 2000 16:22:20 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 11 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Miles Fidelman writes: > Are there any gotchas I should watch out for, and/or any suggestions for > a smooth transition - first from sendmail to qmail (while keeping my > majordomo lists functional) and then from majordomo to ezmlm? For help on running majordomo under qmail, see my FAQ: -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 16:46:45 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA05517; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:09:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id QAA05510 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:09:21 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 26501 invoked by uid 50); 7 Jan 2000 00:21:26 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? References: <14452.56116.763300.426540@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> In-Reply-To: Dave Sill's message of "Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:13:08 -0500 (EST)" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 06 Jan 2000 16:21:26 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 25 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dave Sill writes: > I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I think > ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, reliability, and > manageability, and it's well worth the effort to switch. The sendmail vs. qmail switch depends a lot on both how experienced you are with setting up mail systems and how much you think like qmail. qmail is a package which seems to be highly intuitive for some people (far more intuitive than any other MTA) and at the same time highly unintuitive for other people. Dave's Life With qmail document is highly recommended. qmail is very much unlike sendmail. As for ezmlm vs. majordomo, well, I'm currently maintaining the majordomo with qmail FAQ and I'm considering switching to ezmlm instead. :) You want the -idx version so that the old majordomo commands still work as your users expect them to, and there are definitely some interesting differences in how ezmlm does things, but the automatic bounce management all by itself is probably worth the price of admission. I don't have experience with mailing list software other than majordomo and ezmlm, so I'll leave the additional recommendations to other folks. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 17:00:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA05710; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:27:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA05703 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:27:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id TAA10503; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 19:37:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 19:37:37 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: Dave Sill cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: <14452.56116.763300.426540@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Dave, A followup question: On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Dave Sill wrote: > I recommend installing ezmlm+qmail on your existing list server (just > don't install qmail-smtpd (on port 25) or qmail's "sendmail"). That'll > allow you to play with qmail and ezmlm without interfering with your > majordomo+sendmail setup. > > Once you've migrated the lists to ezmlm, you can turn off sendmail and > install qmail-smtpd. any thoughts on how to get sendmail/majordomo and qmail/ezmlm to run at the same time - each serving some lists as far as I can tell, I can't configure both sendmail and qmail to listen on port 25 - each listening for different things so.. it seems like what I'd have to do is have either sendmail or qmail do the smtp listening, and hand off a range of addresses to the other program's queue -- any thoughts on how to do this? Thanks, Miles Fidelman ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 19:46:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA07657; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 19:37:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id TAA07650 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 19:37:39 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 2383 invoked by uid 100); 6 Jan 2000 22:49:45 -0500 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 22:49:45 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Miles Fidelman cc: Dave Sill , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > as far as I can tell, I can't configure both sendmail and qmail to listen > on port 25 - each listening for different things Right. > so.. it seems like what I'd have to do is have either sendmail or qmail do > the smtp listening, and hand off a range of addresses to the other > program's queue -- any thoughts on how to do this? It's not hard. Assuming that you have sendmail listening on port 25, just set up the alias file to call qmail-queue for the addresses that you want qmail to handle. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 6 23:31:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA09620; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 23:28:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA09613 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 23:27:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA13439; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 23:39:59 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Subject: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 23:39:59 -0800 Message-ID: <13437.947230799@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Just a brief appeal to any of you out there who might be thinking of setting up a mailing list with the help of EGROUPS.COM. Please don't. In fact if you are adverse to spam, you may just want to do what I have just done here, and blacklist the entire egroups.com domain, either at your router or in your mail server control files, so as to avoid being placed on various EGROUPS.COM spam lists without your consent. (See example below.) Seriously, this is SOOOOOOOOO lame. These people are pretending to be professional list administrators, and not only are they spamming but they apparently can't be bothered with little things like, oh, CONFIRMING list subscriptions before they finalize them. Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! Ron Guilmette ------- Forwarded Message Return-Path: lfp-retsub-947224300-457933015-rfg=monkeys.com@egroups.com Received: from mu.egroups.com (mu.egroups.com [207.138.41.151]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA13092 for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 21:51:42 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: lfp-retsub-947224300-457933015-rfg=monkeys.com@egroups.com Received: from [10.1.1.11] by mu.egroups.com with NNFMP; 07 Jan 2000 05:51:40 -0000 Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 05:51:40 -0000 From: "eGroups.com Manager" To: rfg@monkeys.com Subject: Welcome to the lfp group Reply-To: lfp-unsubscribe-rfg=monkeys.com@egroups.com Message-ID: <853utc+f7tc@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 Mailing-List: contact lfp-owner@egroups.com; run by eGroups.com Precedence: list X-Original-Recipient: RFC822;rfg@monkeys.com Hello! info@lotsofreestuff.com has included you in the lfp group at eGroups.com, a free email service. By joining this group, you can share information, store photographs and files, coordinate events and more! info@lotsofreestuff.com says: WELCOME AND THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE LEGALFORM.COM and LOTSOFREESTUFF.COM NEWSLETTER GROUP. We will not waste your time. WE DO NOT SELL ANYTHING IN OUR NEWSLETTER, SAME AS OUR WEBSITE -- IT'S ALL FREE! We provide FREE information about FREE stuff that you can use whether at home or at work, including merchandise, products, reports, manuals, legal forms, software, services and much more - all FREE! If you sell a product or service, we'll help you in many ways in marketing on the internet. We want to become your number one source for helpful information and FREE stuff. Our service is always FREE and we NEVER give or sell our subscriber list to anyone. Thank you and Welcome! Yancey Sexton, Webmaster TO Unsubscribe: Click Reply in your email program and then Send. eGroups.com asks group moderators to not add anyone to their group who does not wish to join. If you believe this policy has been violated, please notify us at abuse@egroups.com Welcome! eGroups.com - The easiest way for groups of people to communicate! http://www.egroups.com ------- End of Forwarded Message From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 07:55:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA16678; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 07:23:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from ns.secondary.com (ns.secondary.com [208.184.76.39]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA16671 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 07:23:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from v4j31 (ip12.proper.com [165.227.249.12]) by ns.secondary.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA08876; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 07:35:27 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <4.2.1.20000107073356.00cbe840@mail.imc.org> X-Sender: paulh@mail.imc.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.1 Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 07:36:09 -0800 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Paul Hoffman / IMC Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Cc: hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com In-Reply-To: <13437.947230799@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:39 PM 1/6/00 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up > to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming >lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! Great idea, Ron! Go commit fraud in the name of anti-spamming. That is sure to help the anti-spam movement. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 10:02:21 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA18687; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 09:56:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id JAA18680 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 09:56:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id KAA39866 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 10:07:34 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <4.2.1.20000107073356.00cbe840@mail.imc.org> References: <4.2.1.20000107073356.00cbe840@mail.imc.org> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 09:48:24 -0800 To: Paul Hoffman / IMC , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Cc: hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 7:36 AM -0800 1/7/2000, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote: > Great idea, Ron! Go commit fraud in the name of anti-spamming. That >is sure to help the anti-spam movement. The ends justify the means. Anything for the cause. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 10:16:02 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id JAA18657; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 09:51:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from onelist.com (www.onelist.com [209.207.164.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id JAA18650 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 09:51:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 7027 invoked from network); 7 Jan 2000 17:52:11 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO corp.onelist.com) (63.192.206.67) by www.onelist.com with SMTP; 7 Jan 2000 17:52:11 -0000 Message-ID: <387627F2.48FCAE39@corp.onelist.com> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 17:52:50 +0000 From: Mark Fletcher X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.0.36 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM CC: kate@corp.onelist.com, eng@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted References: <200001070900.BAA10473@honor.greatcircle.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Just a brief appeal to any of you out there who might be thinking of > setting up a mailing list with the help of EGROUPS.COM. Please don't. > > In fact if you are adverse to spam, you may just want to do what I > have just done here, and blacklist the entire egroups.com domain, > either at your router or in your mail server control files, so as > to avoid being placed on various EGROUPS.COM spam lists without your > consent. (See example below.) > > Seriously, this is SOOOOOOOOO lame. These people are pretending to > be professional list administrators, and not only are they spamming > but they apparently can't be bothered with little things like, oh, > CONFIRMING list subscriptions before they finalize them. > You are absolutely correct, and I am embarassed by the mistake. When people want to transfer their lists over to ONElist/eGroups, we have mechanisms in place where a human has to verify that the list is legit before the transfer can go through. That obviously didn't happen in this case, and we're investigating what happened. On a related note, as part of the merger of ONElist and eGroups, we're implementing new strict anti-spamming measures across the entire service, including pro-active deletion of potential spam lists, more human interaction to prevent abuse of our service, and a beefed up customer support group. If anyone has a problem with either ONElist or eGroups, which you are not able to resolve, please feel free to contact Kate Shambarger, our Director of Customer Support, directly at kate@corp.onelist.com. Thanks, Mark From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 11:31:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA19691; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:24:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA19684 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:23:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA15445; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:18:20 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 07:36:09 -0800. <4.2.1.20000107073356.00cbe840@mail.imc.org> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 11:18:20 -0800 Message-ID: <15443.947272700@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <4.2.1.20000107073356.00cbe840@mail.imc.org>, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote: >At 11:39 PM 1/6/00 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >>Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up >> to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming >>lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! > >Great idea, Ron! Go commit fraud in the name of anti-spamming. That is sure >to help the anti-spam movement. It isn't fraud. Egroups has their system setup so that anyone can subscribe anyone else to their mailing lists. I assume that that is intentional on their part... kind-of like MCI's ``friends and family'' plan. Egroups is intentionally allowing me (and you, and everybody) to sign up our friends and family to their lists. (The new subscribee's ascent to this is apparently not required.) Given that, and given that I'm quite sure that would just love to get information from lotsoffreestuff.com via egroups.com, I'm simply going to nominate him for this swell free service. If there is any fraud involved here, it is egroups fradulently trying to pretend that they have no control over what their own servers are doing, not to mention egroups fradulent attempts to skirt the letter of current California law by acting as front-men for the spammers using their services. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 11:46:51 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA19894; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:38:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA19887 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:38:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.10.0.Beta6/8.10.0.Beta6) with ESMTP id e07Jop217811 Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:50:46 -0800 (PST) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <13437.947230799@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up > to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming > lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! Fine... as long as you're the list-owner. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 12:01:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA19851; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:37:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA19844 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:37:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.10.0.Beta6/8.10.0.Beta6) with ESMTP id e07JnVp17790 Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:49:21 -0800 (PST) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <13437.947230799@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > Seriously, this is SOOOOOOOOO lame. These people are pretending to > be professional list administrators, and not only are they spamming > but they apparently can't be bothered with little things like, oh, > CONFIRMING list subscriptions before they finalize them. Do you force your list-managers to use confirmation? That is, is there some mechanism by which it is impossible for a list-manager to add an address unless there has been a user confirmation? I know of no product that will conform to this, Ron, so you might as well just pull yourself off the net. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 12:16:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA19682; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:20:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA19670 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:20:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id LAA77328 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:31:39 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:32:10 -0800 To: list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: managing list archives... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I figured I'd bring this up for possible discussion... Because of the virus attack that hit just before Christmas, it made me take a closer look at the mailing list archives and just how secure they are, both from a scenario where someone decides to attack a list by harvesting addresses and mailing list members directly, and the more general anti-spammer harvesting issue. The problem is how to make archives easily accessible, without leaving them wide open to anyone. It's an interesting tradeoff. I use two sets of archives. One is web based, using Web Crossing (www.webcrossing.com), which keeps threaded archives for about 30 days. I found it was possible to access e-mail addresses as guest, so I'm in process of recoding it so that guests can't access that info. Guests will still be able to browse, but can't access key identifying data without logging in and registering on the site. My other archive is via FTP, making the digested versions of things available (and that is accessible via a search engine). This, of course, is wide open. I've considered a number of ways to put some better controls on this. The easy one, obviously, is to put it behind a password, and make the password available in the list documentation. But -- that fails any number of sniff tests. It's a step up from no protection at all, but anyone motivatged enough to target the archives specifically won't get slowed down significantly. It's a false security. What I've decided to do for now is to move the archives from FTP to HTTP, on an Apache server, and then to write an apache authentification module. When you try to access the archives, you'd have to give your e-mail address, and you'll be validated in only if that e-mail address is a subscribed user. That puts the archives at the same level of security as the list itself -- they can only be accessed by someone who has gone through the subscription validation process (so by definition, they can get your e-mail simply by reading the list). It locks out anyone who isn't subscribed, so it locks out anyone you've kicked off the list or who isn't willing to give you a valid e-mail (assuming subscriptions are mailback-validated). anyone see any problems with this? I didn't want Yet Another Password, and it seems to me an authentification scheme that ties into the subscriber database is the easiest way to close off access without significantly raising complexity for the end user. Anyone see any real flaws here? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 12:46:40 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA20609; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:27:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA20602 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:27:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA23658 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:39:08 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <15443.947272700@monkeys.com> References: <15443.947272700@monkeys.com> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:39:38 -0800 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:18 AM -0800 1/7/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > It isn't fraud. No, it's not -- but it is spamming, so I guess either Ronald feels that the end does really justify the means, or Ronald ought to admit he's promoting spamming and ought to blacklist himself. To be really blunt about it, if Ronald is willing to say it's okay for him to do this because he feels it's important to prove his point, isn't that exactly what every other spammer uses to justify THEIR reason for spamming? Because their message is so important it overrides the rules the rest of us live with? At the very least, Ronald simply lowers himself to the same level as the spammers, which isn't my idea of a way to prove a point. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 13:00:54 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA20809; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:52:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA20802 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:52:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA15893; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:04:27 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Cc: abuse@egroups.com, dru@egroups.net Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 11:50:46 -0800. Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 13:04:27 -0800 Message-ID: <15891.947279067@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: >On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >> Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up >> to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming >> lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! > >Fine... as long as you're the list-owner. Sorry, no. It is _not_ fine. If I wake up tomorrow morning and decide to create a mailing list called ``Great Pyramid Schemes You Can Join for only $19.95'', and if I then unilaterally subscribe to my marvelous new mailing list, that is most definitely _not_ fine. That's called spamming, and it's now illegal under California law. Can Egroups.Com be used as (witting or unwitting) accomplices in this type of violation of California law? Clearly, the answer is `yes', and that was proved by the spam I received from their server yesterday. I for one am more than willing to overlook the participation of either egroups.com or any other list hosting service in this type of spamming and violation of California law IF AND ONLY IF they will just be so kind as to do what most of the rest of the list administrators reading these words have already done long ago, i.e. implement a simple subscription confirmation protocol that will insure that I and other Internet users are not exposed to the additional risk of ``subscription bombing'' IN ADDITION to the risk of being indirectly spammed with the assistance of their servers. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 13:15:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA20626; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:29:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id MAA20619 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:29:12 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 1094376 invoked by uid 3995); 7 Jan 2000 20:41:26 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14454.20342.529886.975998@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:41:26 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Sill To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? In-Reply-To: <14452.56116.763300.426540@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> References: <14452.56116.763300.426540@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M >I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I >think ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, ... And by that I mean both speed of delivery of a message to a list and speed of updating a list. The former is largely a function of MTA (qmail), the latter of the MLM (ezmlm). Here's a sample of the delivery speed you can get with qmail. My list server is an old Alphaserver 2100 that is also ORNL's netnews server and internal anonymous FTP server. One list I host is tru64-unix-managers, with ~1900 subscribers around the world. Here's how one delivery this afternoon went: 13:31:55: message received for list 13:31:59: message resent to list 13:32:01: qmail has spawned 400 qmail-remote processes (config'd max) 13:33:20: qmail-remotes drop below 400, i.e., all subscribers' systems have been contacted 13:33:22: qmail-remotes drop below 300 13:33:29: qmail-remotes drop below 200 13:34:18: qmail-remotes drop below 100 13:36:35: qmail-remotes drop to 0, i.e., message has been delivered to all subscribers whose systems were reachable on the first try Not too shabby, and I haven't even tried max'ing the remote concurrency. This is a Majordomo list with automatic bounce handling. -Dave From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 13:30:20 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id MAA20649; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:30:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA20640 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:30:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA15797; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:42:25 -0800 (PST) To: "Roger B.A. Klorese" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 11:49:21 -0800. Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 12:42:25 -0800 Message-ID: <15794.947277745@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: >On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >> Seriously, this is SOOOOOOOOO lame. These people are pretending to >> be professional list administrators, and not only are they spamming >> but they apparently can't be bothered with little things like, oh, >> CONFIRMING list subscriptions before they finalize them. > >Do you force your list-managers to use confirmation? That is, is there >some mechanism by which it is impossible for a list-manager to add an >address unless there has been a user confirmation? I know of no product >that will conform to this, Ron, so you might as well just pull yourself >off the net. As far as I know, every modern off-the-shelf list management package now provides, at the very least, an option which, when set, will cause the list management package to send, via E-mail, SOME SORT of confirmation request to each alleged new subscriber and to wait for a suitable response BEFORE finalizing the subscription. (The better packages will even e-mail a difficult-to-forge cookie of some sort to the alleged new subscriber and then verify that they get the exact same cookie back from that subscriber as part of the confirmation process.) Certainly, if the administrator of a given server system gives any and all mailing list adminsitartors who have access to that system carte blanche (e.g. root access) so that they can run rampant and do anything they like, then yes, some will undoubtedly be able to disable this prudent safety mechanism. But for any well-managed server that belongs to any company that makes its daily bread on the basis of providing mailing list services to random members of the general public, the user interface provided to the individual mailing list administrators clearly SHOULD NOT allow this safety mechanism to be disabled. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 13:44:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA21177; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:33:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from gw.tssi.com (gw.tssi.com [198.147.197.1]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA21170 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:33:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from celery.tssi.com (nolan@celery.tssi.com [198.147.197.6]) by gw.tssi.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA29000 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:45:33 -0600 Received: (from celery.tssi.com) by celery.tssi.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA27726 for list-managers@GreatCircle.com; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:45:32 -0600 From: Mike Nolan Message-Id: <200001072145.PAA27726@celery.tssi.com> Subject: Re: managing list archives... To: list-managers@GreatCircle.com (List Managers) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:45:32 -0600 (CST) In-Reply-To: from "Chuq Von Rospach" at Jan 07, 2000 11:32:10 AM Reply-To: nolan@tssi.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > anyone see any problems with this? I didn't want Yet Another > Password, and it seems to me an authentification scheme that ties > into the subscriber database is the easiest way to close off access > without significantly raising complexity for the end user. Anyone see > any real flaws here? Well, if your user base is like mine, users THINK their e-mail address is Joe.User@foo.bar when it is really joeuser@piddly.foo.bar. If you're extracting the subscriber address from headers and then they're hand-typing in their e-mail address as a verification step, a goodly portion of them aren't gonna get in. -- Mike Nolan From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 14:15:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21521; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:02:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21514 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:02:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA62052 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:13:53 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001072205.RAA34526@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> References: <200001072205.RAA34526@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:14:11 -0800 To: Mitch Collinsworth , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: managing list archives... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:05 PM -0500 1/7/2000, Mitch Collinsworth wrote: > Well, they have to give _a_ e-mail address, but I don't see where it > makes them give _theirs_. If they only have to know the address of > _someone_ who is subscribed to the list then it doesn't really lock > out anyone who was once on the list but since kicked off. Hmm. > For anyone > else, if the list info gives your address anywhere (maybe it doesn't) > and you're a subscriber, then everyone can be assured of knowing one > valid address. That's easy enough to take care of, simply by denying access to admin addresseses. Hmm. you have a good point. While this would nuke out the spammers, since they couldn't get an email address without first subscribing SOME legal address to the list, it doesn't solve the "kicked out getting even" attack scenario, because they would have had access to mail where they could get someone else's address from. So it's no better than the "password on the web site" solution, but a lot more work. Anyone see a way to fix this? I don't, unfortunately. thanks, Mitch. Saves me a buncha work for little real benefit. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 14:29:40 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA21382; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:53:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (benge.graphics.cornell.edu [128.84.247.43]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA21375 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:53:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from benge.graphics.cornell.edu (mkc@localhost) by benge.graphics.cornell.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA34526; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:05:59 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from mkc@benge.graphics.cornell.edu) Message-Id: <200001072205.RAA34526@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: managing list archives... In-Reply-To: Message from Chuq Von Rospach of "Fri, 07 Jan 2000 11:32:10 PST." Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 17:05:59 -0500 From: Mitch Collinsworth Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >What I've decided to do for now is to move the archives from FTP to >HTTP, on an Apache server, and then to write an apache >authentification module. When you try to access the archives, you'd >have to give your e-mail address, and you'll be validated in only if >that e-mail address is a subscribed user. That puts the archives at >the same level of security as the list itself -- they can only be >accessed by someone who has gone through the subscription validation >process (so by definition, they can get your e-mail simply by reading >the list). It locks out anyone who isn't subscribed, so it locks out >anyone you've kicked off the list or who isn't willing to give you a >valid e-mail (assuming subscriptions are mailback-validated). > >anyone see any problems with this? I didn't want Yet Another >Password, and it seems to me an authentification scheme that ties >into the subscriber database is the easiest way to close off access >without significantly raising complexity for the end user. Anyone see >any real flaws here? Well, they have to give _a_ e-mail address, but I don't see where it makes them give _theirs_. If they only have to know the address of _someone_ who is subscribed to the list then it doesn't really lock out anyone who was once on the list but since kicked off. For anyone else, if the list info gives your address anywhere (maybe it doesn't) and you're a subscriber, then everyone can be assured of knowing one valid address. -Mitch From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 14:44:39 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21861; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:34:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21854 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:34:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id OAA37328 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:45:37 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001072145.PAA27726@celery.tssi.com> References: <200001072145.PAA27726@celery.tssi.com> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:46:06 -0800 To: nolan@tssi.com, list-managers@GreatCircle.COM (List Managers) From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: managing list archives... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:45 PM -0600 1/7/2000, Mike Nolan wrote: > Well, if your user base is like mine, users THINK their e-mail address > is Joe.User@foo.bar when it is really joeuser@piddly.foo.bar. That's fixed by moving to something like what Lyris does, or a more generalized VERP mailing. I'm currently wrangling with a replacement for bulk_mailer that'll put the user's subscribed address back into the To: line, and give me some other nice customization features (as we speak, I'm doing some performance testing on net::DNS, and finding they're real performance pigs. Sigh, I may have to move that to C...) -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 14:59:40 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21852; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:34:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21845 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:33:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA16402; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:46:09 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 14:10:00 -0800. Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 14:46:09 -0800 Message-ID: <16400.947285169@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Jeremy Blackman wrote: >Another possibility, since I know Onelist and eGroups both store all list >subscriptions for an address in a single account, and you can set global >settings for yourself... why not have a setting on the account that says >'I want to /always/ be asked for confirmation, even if the list admin >subscribes me manually'? You're missing the point... My question is ``Why don't they just do this (confirm) for EVERYBODY and ALL OF THE TIME?'' As far as I'm concerned, that is the ONLY responsible way to run a service like the one they are running. Anything less than that allows various ramdom net-hooligans to, for example, launch an egroups-assisted subscription bomb on, for example, Gray Davis, or me, or you, or... The default setting should be set to ``No, DO NOT allow ramdom net-hooligans to subscription bomb Joe Innocent Bystander.'' >And should we really still be cc'ing abuse@egroups.com on this? :) Yes. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 15:15:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21990; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:44:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21970 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:44:39 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e07MuU929137; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:56:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:56:30 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: managing list archives... Message-ID: <20000107175630.K25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, Jan 07, 2000 at 11:32:10AM -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > But -- that fails any number of sniff tests. It's a step up from no > protection at all, but anyone motivatged enough to target the > archives specifically won't get slowed down significantly. It's a > false security. I don't think there are any good solutions to that problem. In order to make the archives accessible to casual use by human beings, it has to be fairly easy to authenticate yourself. In order to make it sufficiently easy for the clueless to authenticate, the authentication instructions need to be fairly prominent, enough that it would not deter someone specifically interested in harvesting your archives. Here we make the authentication pretty easy. The list archives are behind a password-protected server. Anyone can create their own account and password -- it's trivial. I have never been able to find evidence of someone targeting our archive directly for e-mail addresses and just don't worry about it. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 15:29:57 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21946; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:40:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21939 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:40:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA16468 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:52:56 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 17:26:13 -0500. <10001071726.aa18431@one.eListX.com> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 14:52:56 -0800 Message-ID: <16466.947285576@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <10001071726.aa18431@one.eListX.com>, James M Galvin wrote: rfg> But for any well-managed server that belongs to any company that rfg> makes its daily bread on the basis of providing mailing list rfg> services to random members of the general public, the user interface rfg> provided to the individual mailing list administrators clearly rfg> SHOULD NOT allow this safety mechanism to be disabled. >Who do you consider a "random member of the general public"? Well, for one example, the guy who subscribed me to that list which promoted lotsoffreestuff.com. >Suppose elist services are provided on a for fee basis. Are such >individuals random? They are less random. In that case, at least we know that they have money... money which can be, and which should be forfitted if they are caught signing up ``subscribers'' who never asked to be on their bleedin' lists. >I hope not. It should be entirely reasonable to >not only disable but not even offer the safety mechanism to a known >elist administrator, where "known" obviously means more than just >someone who came to my web site and told me who they were. Yes. Money can be used as a sort-of `bond' against misbehavior. But as I understand it, you don't need anything other than a Hotmail account in order to start up your own new eGroups list. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 15:33:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA21110; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:25:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA21100 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:25:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA16012; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 13:37:22 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com, dru@egroups.net Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 12:39:38 -0800. Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 13:37:22 -0800 Message-ID: <16010.947281042@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Chuq Von Rospach wrote: >At 11:18 AM -0800 1/7/2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > >> It isn't fraud. > >No, it's not -- but it is spamming... Sorry no. It isn't that either. Let's review shall we? Spamming is the act of sending someone unsolicited e-mail. If I sign _you_ up to one (or more) mailing lists... let's say ones that are run by Egroups.Com... then I can do that without sending you any e-mail at all. Thus, *I* have not spammed you. Later on, Egroups.Com may send you some unsolicited e-mails, but that's THEIR responsibility, don't cha think? DUH! OK, chuq, since you may have trouble working that out, let's try a simpler example... I ask a friend to shoot you in the head with his .45 Smith & Wesson. My friend, helpful fellow that he is, complies with my request. Guess who goes to jail for murder, me or my friend. Don't answer right away. Take the afternoon to think about it if you need to. >To be really blunt about it, if Ronald is willing to say it's okay >for him to do this because he feels it's important to prove his >point... To be really blunt about it, I'm more than willing to _say_ that _I_ (or anyone else on the net for that matter) *may* at any moment, go to www.egroups.com and subscribe to a couple of zillion of the lists that are being run from that site. And I am more than willing to have the people at egroups.com con- template the amount of grief and difficulty they would cause for our governor and his staff if this were to happen, and if the governor's staff was then forced to go thru the tedious process of manually UNSUBSCRIBING from all of those same zillion egroups.com lists just in order to return the mailbox to a usable state. (You have no idea what a huge pain in the ass, and a huge time-sink this sort of thing can be UNTIL you have had the mailbox that you use for most of your normal business communications rendered useless by a malicious `subscription bomb' or two.) >At the very least, Ronald simply lowers himself to the same level as >the spammers, which isn't my idea of a way to prove a point. Correction: I *would* lower myself to that level, if I did indeed go to www.groups.com and subscribe to a bunch of their inadequately-secured lists. But it is my sincere hope that it will not be necessary to provide that sort of demonstration of the hazards of non-confirming lists in order for egroups.com, and others, to fully appreciate these risks, and to take steps, immediately, to reduce them. Frankly, I don't actually see why you're even trying to generate an argument here chuq... other than the fact that you like to argue. I mean _you_ _do_ understand the value and importance of doing proper subscription confirmations, and you _do_ already have that setup for all of the lists that _you_ manage, correct? (I'm just guessing that you've done this for all of your lists, because once upon a time I _was_ forge-subscribed to some Apple list or another, and my recollection was that that subscription _did_ require a conformation from me... which I of course never sent... and thus the subscription just harmlessly died of its own accord, without any additional effort on my part.) From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 15:45:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA22522; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:22:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA22515 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:22:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.10.0.Beta6/8.10.0.Beta6) with ESMTP id e07NYSg21780 Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:34:23 -0800 (PST) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <15794.947277745@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > As far as I know, every modern off-the-shelf list management package now > provides, at the very least, an option which, when set, will cause the > list management package to send, via E-mail, SOME SORT of confirmation > request to each alleged new subscriber and to wait for a suitable response > BEFORE finalizing the subscription. (The better packages will even e-mail > a difficult-to-forge cookie of some sort to the alleged new subscriber and > then verify that they get the exact same cookie back from that subscriber > as part of the confirmation process.) > > Certainly, if the administrator of a given server system gives any and all > mailing list adminsitartors who have access to that system carte blanche > (e.g. root access) so that they can run rampant and do anything they like, > then yes, some will undoubtedly be able to disable this prudent safety > mechanism. But, in fact, just about every package of this sort, whether an off-the-shelf package or a list host, DOES allow individual list owners to add users without confirmation if they so choose. Don't generalize without data. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 15:59:39 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA22078; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:56:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from public.lists.apple.com (public.lists.apple.com [17.254.0.151]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA22071 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:56:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from [17.216.27.198] (A17-216-27-198.apple.com [17.216.27.198]) by public.lists.apple.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA39540 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:07:50 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000107175630.K25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <20000107175630.K25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:08:16 -0800 To: Tim Pierce , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: managing list archives... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:56 PM -0500 1/7/2000, Tim Pierce wrote: > In order to > make it sufficiently easy for the clueless to authenticate, the > authentication instructions need to be fairly prominent, enough > that it would not deter someone specifically interested in harvesting > your archives. I think it's 'only' necessary to make the archives as safe as being subscribed is (and that's another discussion entirely!) -- which is why authentificating against whether the person is subscribed or not is where I'm headed. Hmm. Here's a thought. you have a web page, where you type in your e-mail address. That's validated against the subscriber lists, and if you authenticate, you e-mail the access into to the user. then, you change the password on a regular basis (daily?) or even on a per-user basis, if you want. With an SQL backend, adding a password field isn't that bad, and allowing a user to set a password (and e-mailing it to them again if they forget) isn't terribly difficult. Hmm. that has potential. > I have never been able > to find evidence of someone targeting our archive directly for > e-mail addresses and just don't worry about it. I haven't, either, but I do worry about it, because the only thing I can guarantee is if/when someone DOES target it, it'll be at the time I can least afford to have to deal with it... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 16:14:42 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21609; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:05:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21593 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:05:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F41CAF89D; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:28:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA20995; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:14:00 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:13:59 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: managing list archives... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > What I've decided to do for now is to move the archives from FTP to > HTTP, on an Apache server, and then to write an apache > authentification module. When you try to access the archives, you'd > have to give your e-mail address, and you'll be validated in only if > that e-mail address is a subscribed user. That puts the archives at > the same level of security as the list itself -- they can only be > accessed by someone who has gone through the subscription validation > process (so by definition, they can get your e-mail simply by reading > the list). It locks out anyone who isn't subscribed, so it locks out > anyone you've kicked off the list or who isn't willing to give you a > valid e-mail (assuming subscriptions are mailback-validated). I have been working on writing a mod_auth_listar, which will check the HTTP user/pass against an e-mail and a web interface password (since Listar does allow passwords for the web interface, though I think the cookie method is more secure). I don't want to use just the e-mail, since then if you knew even one e-mail of someone on the list, you could harvest all the others... though I don't want to require people to set a web password just to access the archives. I have been considering an intermediate login page that would create a Listar authentication cookie, but that is starting to just get frighteningly wrong. > anyone see any problems with this? I didn't want Yet Another > Password, and it seems to me an authentification scheme that ties > into the subscriber database is the easiest way to close off access > without significantly raising complexity for the end user. Anyone see > any real flaws here? Other than the one I point out, no. But say someone forwards a message from the list and you take the 'From' field in the forwarded message, enter that in the 'E-mail' login portion of your web authentication box, and voila, given one e-mail you can harvest all. It is still a better approach than simply leaving them open to the world, though. -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 16:18:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA21512; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:02:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA21505 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:01:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3522CAF89D; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:24:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA20992; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:10:01 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:10:00 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: "Roger B.A. Klorese" Cc: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote: > > Seriously, this is SOOOOOOOOO lame. These people are pretending to > > be professional list administrators, and not only are they spamming > > but they apparently can't be bothered with little things like, oh, > > CONFIRMING list subscriptions before they finalize them. > > Do you force your list-managers to use confirmation? That is, is there > some mechanism by which it is impossible for a list-manager to add an > address unless there has been a user confirmation? I know of no product > that will conform to this, Ron, so you might as well just pull yourself > off the net. I would, however, argue that in largely-unsupervised list hosting situations such as eGroups/Onelist, there should be a 'self-ban' command, which tells the listserver that you never want to be signed up for that list again. In other words, still allow the list admin to subscribe anyone, since too many legitimate lists use it, and in the 'you joined' notice message, offer not only a way to unsubscribe (since often times when they get the unsubscribe notice, malicious users of those systems will simply resubscribe you) but a way to say 'regardless of what the list admin says, I want off this list permanently'. Now, that may not be the most /elegant/ solution - it is something I cooked up spur-of-the-moment as I read this message thread, and could probably be improved upon - but from my point of view it seems to solve both issues...not necessarily in the /best/ way, but it does solve them. Another possibility, since I know Onelist and eGroups both store all list subscriptions for an address in a single account, and you can set global settings for yourself... why not have a setting on the account that says 'I want to /always/ be asked for confirmation, even if the list admin subscribes me manually'? Since I suspect most of us have, at one time or another, been on an eGroups or Onelist list of some sort, that would also seem fairly trivial, and if they included information about how to set that on yourself - either in the 'you have been subscribed' message or on a website on their page with a URL in the 'you have been subscribed' message - that would seem to be another feasible solution. Constructive brainstorming is always better than simply flaming people, and may solve problems that were not originally seen. I know that watching this has made me think about adding something similar to what I describe above to the small list-hosting service JT and I are setting up. :) And should we really still be cc'ing abuse@egroups.com on this? :) -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 16:30:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA22087; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:56:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA22080 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:56:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC16EAF89D; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:18:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA21005; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:04:50 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 15:04:49 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <15891.947279067@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > I for one am more than willing to overlook the participation of either > egroups.com or any other list hosting service in this type of spamming > and violation of California law IF AND ONLY IF they will just be so kind > as to do what most of the rest of the list administrators reading these > words have already done long ago, i.e. implement a simple subscription > confirmation protocol that will insure that I and other Internet users > are not exposed to the additional risk of ``subscription bombing'' IN > ADDITION to the risk of being indirectly spammed with the assistance of > their servers. I think the point that was made earlier was that the majority of individual list owners do not have that restriction placed on them on services other than eGroups. Hence, if I am the list administrator on a Majordomo list, I can do: approve subscribe Do they get a confirmation ticket? Not under stock majordomo, not last time I checked. Does this mean Majordomo on a free Majordomo hosting site could be used by list admins as a spam technique, by signing up people without their consent? Of course! The /vast majority/ of listserver software out there has a way for admins to add users. However, that having been said, it probably does make sense on un-supervised large commercial 'free' list hosting sites to have some sort of protection against this being done, but saying 'everyone else does it' is not valid, since while most give confirmation tickets for a normal subscribe, if a user is /manually added/ by a list admin, it does not. And that appears to be the case here; not that another user tried to sign them up, but that they were manually added by the admin. In Listserv, I can add manually. In Majordomo, I can add manually or even just edit the user file. In Smartlist, I can edit the user files. I suspect you can do the same in ezmlm, Mailman, and Sympa (which I have not used as a list or site admin, so cannot attest to). In Listar, I could edit the user file on disk, or I could just send an authenticated admin command mail, and manually add people in that. The key is that most listserver packages are designed around the theory that the list admins are responsible; otherwise the sysadmin would not let them have a list, right? But that theory goes out the window with free hosting services with unsupervised signups, such as eGroups/Onelist. So, while you are arguing a valid point (something should change about the eGroups/Onelist setup) arguing that they are somehow doing something different than all other setups is /not/ true. The problem is they are doing the /same/ thing as the setups where the list admin can be trusted. Just my $0.02 + state sales tax. Take as applicable. -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 17:15:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA24548; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:08:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA24541 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:08:11 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 889 invoked by uid 50); 8 Jan 2000 01:20:23 -0000 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: managing list archives... References: <200001072205.RAA34526@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> In-Reply-To: Chuq Von Rospach's message of "Fri, 7 Jan 2000 14:14:11 -0800" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 07 Jan 2000 17:20:23 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 25 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach writes: > Anyone see a way to fix this? I don't, unfortunately. thanks, Mitch. > Saves me a buncha work for little real benefit. It sounds to me like the goal is to restrict access to the archives to only list members, correct? If that's the case, then that means you have to authenticate an incoming user as a list member. To do authentication, you have to have a shared secret between you and the person you're authenticating, however indirectly. In the absence of personal certs issued by a trusted authority or something else extremely complicated, in practice I think this pretty much means either a password equivalent of some sort or a confirmation handshake (which is essentially a one-time password leveraged off the security of the person's e-mail account). The scheme of using their e-mail address and checking against the subscriber list reduces to using their e-mail address as a password. It's not necessary to join a mailing list to know the e-mail address of one of the subscribers; there are other ways of obtaining that information, down to someone just happening to mention in public that they're on a particular mailing list and making some guesses about what address they would be subscribed as. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 19:17:14 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA25773; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 19:12:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA25766 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 19:12:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA17174; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 19:24:52 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 15:34:23 -0800. Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 19:24:52 -0800 Message-ID: <17172.947301892@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: >On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: >> As far as I know, every modern off-the-shelf list management package now >> provides, at the very least, an option which, when set, will cause the >> list management package to send, via E-mail, SOME SORT of confirmation >> request to each alleged new subscriber and to wait for a suitable response >> BEFORE finalizing the subscription. (The better packages will even e-mail >> a difficult-to-forge cookie of some sort to the alleged new subscriber and >> then verify that they get the exact same cookie back from that subscriber >> as part of the confirmation process.) >> >> Certainly, if the administrator of a given server system gives any and all >> mailing list adminsitartors who have access to that system carte blanche >> (e.g. root access) so that they can run rampant and do anything they like, >> then yes, some will undoubtedly be able to disable this prudent safety >> mechanism. > >But, in fact, just about every package of this sort, whether an >off-the-shelf package or a list host, DOES allow individual >list owners to add users without confirmation if they so choose. I do not know that to be the case. But that is beside the point anyway. Are you claiming that it is a Good Thing, that anonymous goofballs can go and get outfits like eGroups to do their spamming for them, or are you only claiming that this is a common situation? >Don't generalize without data. Funny. I was just about to say that same to you. *I'm* not the one who is making statements of the form ``... just about every package of this sort...'' Where is your data to backup that generalization? Have you surveyed all such packages? From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 19:47:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA25948; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 19:39:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA25941 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 19:39:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA17324 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 19:51:31 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 15:04:49 -0800. Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 19:51:31 -0800 Message-ID: <17322.947303491@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message , Jeremy Blackman wrote: >On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > >> I for one am more than willing to overlook the participation of either >> egroups.com or any other list hosting service in this type of spamming >> and violation of California law IF AND ONLY IF they will just be so kind >> as to do what most of the rest of the list administrators reading these >> words have already done long ago, i.e. implement a simple subscription >> confirmation protocol that will insure that I and other Internet users >> are not exposed to the additional risk of ``subscription bombing'' IN >> ADDITION to the risk of being indirectly spammed with the assistance of >> their servers. > >I think the point that was made earlier was that the majority of >individual list owners do not have that restriction placed on them on >services other than eGroups. Hence, if I am the list administrator on a >Majordomo list, I can do: > >approve subscribe > >Do they get a confirmation ticket? Not under stock majordomo, not last >time I checked. Does this mean Majordomo on a free Majordomo hosting site >could be used by list admins as a spam technique, by signing up people >without their consent? Of course! Assuming that this is true, _and_ that the admins of these ``free Majodomo hosting sites'' (got any names?) leave things configured like that, and that they do not take pains to disable this capability, then I for one find it both remarkable and also rather completely absurd. If what you are saying is true, I may switch over to writing spamware, rather than trying to write anti-spamware, because I can see now how writing spamware should be a damn sight easier. Here's a simple scenario... Spammer goes to one of the ``free Majordomo hosting sites'' and does what- ever is necessary to create a new list. He then mails a sequence of 50,000 lines of the form: approve subscribe to that site, followed by a _single_ copy of his spam (for a grand total of only _two_ messages). Total connect time needed for the spammer to spam 50,000 people? Under 1 minute. And as an added bonus, the spammer probably gets the benefit of (a) a nice high-performance server optimized for mailing list distribution and (b) some nice high-bandwidth connections to same. Swell. Just swell. NOT! From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 20:32:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA26378; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 20:27:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from kachina.jetcafe.org (kachina.jetcafe.org [205.147.43.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA26371 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 20:27:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from ee-nt (eckert@netcom15.netcom.com [199.183.9.115]) by kachina.jetcafe.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id UAA25444; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 20:39:17 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.20000107203235.00983180@pop.climber.org> X-Sender: eckert@pop.climber.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.5 (32) Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 20:32:35 -0800 To: Russ Allbery From: SRE Subject: Re: managing list archives... Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM In-Reply-To: References: <200001072205.RAA34526@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 05:20 PM 1/7/00 -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: >The scheme of using their e-mail address and checking against the >subscriber list reduces to using their e-mail address as a password. It's >not necessary to join a mailing list to know the e-mail address of one of >the subscribers Someone once pointed out to me that forging an email address has no security risk if it results in the file being sent to the person whose address was forged... so if you're emailing out the file, using the list of current subscribers is just fine. If you're showing it on the web, you'd have to do something like email a cookie before authorizing viewing for a period of time. Of course if I know that someone ELSE has been viewing your archives, I can use their address to view until the cookie expires. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 21:32:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA26936; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 21:29:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA26929 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 21:29:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.10.0.Beta6/8.10.0.Beta6) with ESMTP id e085f7u27056 Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 21:41:02 -0800 (PST) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <17172.947301892@monkeys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > In message , > "Roger B.A. Klorese" wrote: > >But, in fact, just about every package of this sort, whether an > >off-the-shelf package or a list host, DOES allow individual > >list owners to add users without confirmation if they so choose. > > I do not know that to be the case. Including my hedge of "just about," I do know this to be the case, as I've researched it lately. > But that is beside the point anyway. Are you claiming that it is a Good > Thing, that anonymous goofballs can go and get outfits like eGroups to do > their spamming for them, or are you only claiming that this is a common > situation? Common, of course. > >Don't generalize without data. > > Funny. I was just about to say that same to you. See below. > *I'm* not the one who is making statements of the form ``... just about > every package of this sort...'' > > Where is your data to backup that generalization? Have you surveyed all > such packages? About 20 of them, at last count, free and commercial. -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 22:17:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA27481; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:13:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA27458 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:12:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA91410 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:27:34 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:13:29 -0800 To: Jeremy Blackman From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 3:04 PM -0800 1/7/2000, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > The problem is they are > doing the /same/ thing as the setups where the list admin can be trusted. Which may well be the right thing, as long as there are ways to police the admins appropriately. One thing people have to watch out for is the "no risk" syndrome -- if something, anything can go wrong, then you can't do it. Risk is not absolute, it's something to be managed. The only way you can have no problems it to do nothing. If one admin in one thousand abuses a priviledge, is that a reason to remove it from the other 999? Or do you shoot that thousandth one instead? -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 22:32:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA27479; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:13:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA27457 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:12:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA91416 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:27:34 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: <200001072205.RAA34526@benge.graphics.cornell.edu> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:18:30 -0800 To: Russ Allbery , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: managing list archives... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:20 PM -0800 1/7/2000, Russ Allbery wrote: > It sounds to me like the goal is to restrict access to the archives to > only list members, correct? That seems to be the cleanest way to limit access to a group of approved users -- given that being a subscriber means they've been authorized at some level. I have no problem with a wider audience, except it's really hard to define where "okay" ends, and exactly how to authorize it. I'm open to suggestions. The two groups I'm specifically trying to lock out are the e-mail address harvesters who won't abide by a robots.txt restriction, and the occasional troll that gets kicked off a list and goes looking for ways to create havoc, where, by definition, a rule like "don't do this" won't work. it's an interesting issue that I think has some real need -- it's just not all that easy, if only because defining "good" and "not good" are so difficult, especially programmatically. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 22:47:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA27480; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:13:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA27467 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:12:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA91404 ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:27:29 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:08:58 -0800 To: Jeremy Blackman , "Roger B.A. Klorese" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Cc: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:10 PM -0800 1/7/2000, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > I would, however, argue that in largely-unsupervised list hosting > situations such as eGroups/Onelist, there should be a 'self-ban' command, > which tells the listserver that you never want to be signed up for that > list again. A good idea, or at least some for of "lock this account" setup. what I've got pencilled in to a system I'm designing is a way to flag an account such that it's subscriptions can only be modified through the subscription maintenance page, which would require logging in with a password. This would allow a user to unsubscribe from everything and then lock the account if that's what they want, disallowing anyone else from subscribing them through other means. Secondarily, I'm designing in a set of 'banned' tables for accounts, domains and strings, so that the administrator of, say, whitehouse.gov can have it arranged for the entire domain to be to be automatically rejected, or if some account is being slammed, it can be blackholed for the user. I already do that on an ad hoc basis with procmail, but as I redo everything into an SQL system, it's easier to do right, and make it easier to administrate. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 7 23:02:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA27769; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:57:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from onelist.com (www.onelist.com [209.207.164.157]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id WAA27762 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 22:57:29 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 14531 invoked from network); 8 Jan 2000 07:09:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO corp.onelist.com) (24.14.148.152) by www.onelist.com with SMTP; 8 Jan 2000 07:09:47 -0000 Message-ID: <3876E268.E319E480@corp.onelist.com> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 23:08:24 -0800 From: Mark Fletcher X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12-20 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tom Neff CC: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: avoiding egroups spam References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tom Neff wrote: > > I understand that there is a legitimate need (especially but not only in > Egroups's eyes) for legitimate listowners to be able to PORT their lists > over to Egroups from another service or software package. The trick is how > to distinguish this from spammers doing mass subscribes of victims. I have > a few suggestions for Egroups to consider. > > One suggestion is that the number of LEGITIMATE wholesale list migrations to > Egroups from elsewhere, per day, could not be very large. A customer > service representative inspecting the transaction would probably have very > little difficulty telling the difference between, say, Model-Rockets-L > changing homes, versus SCHWING-XXX DIET SUPPLEMENT trying to add 9,000 > people from AOL. So you tell list owners that bulk subscribes take a day to > process, and you vet them before saying yes. If you have any doubts you > request further verification. > That is exactly how things are supposed to work right now. Bulk list transfers are reviewed by a human before they are done. Unfortunately, in this particular case, a list transfer was approved that should not have been. > Another suggestion is that Egroups should take care to "salt" the web with > telltale marker email addresses (which are never disclosed), the appearance > of any one of which in a bulk subscribe becomes prima facie evidence of a > rip job. > That's an excellent suggestion. I will make a note of it. > A third suggestion is that, for any given list, mass migrations are RARE. > Therefore it would be reasonable, if a bulk subscribe passes all other > kosherness tests, to send an OPT-IN message - containing NO material written > by the list manager whatsoever beyond the name of the list and the manager - > to each address in the bulk subscribe list, requesting a mailed or webbed > confirm before their subscription takes effect. Now, THIS message could > contain as one of the possible responses "no, and never send me one of these > opt-ins again either." That would cover the abuse case where you find > yourself saying no-thanks to eight opt-ins a week. Remember that any > LEGITIMATE list owner who plans to migrate her or his list to Egroups has > ample opportunity beforehand to tell all the members, ON THE OLD LIST, what > is happening and what they need to do to make sure they're included in the > move. (In fact, Egroups could provide a standard form of this announcement > for cut+paste by list managers as part of a "Migration Kit.") > There have been times since we've been on-line that we've completely disabled the ability to add people directly to lists. Our list managers complained loudly and often. There are many legitimate reasons why a list owner needs to directly add an email address or two at a time to a list. The web site allows list owners to do this. In the case of moving a list over from another service, in our experience, most list owners will not do it if it requires the users to re-confirm their subscriptions. So the procedure we have in place now is our attempt to balance the need of our list owners to directly transfer a list with our need to make sure that abuses don't happen. The list owner sends us the list of email addresses, one of our support staff does various verification checks to make sure the previous list as it existed outside of our service was legit, and if it checks out, we do the bulk add. I'd like to also point out that in normal circumstances, users have to reply to a confirmation email before they are subscribed to any ONElist/eGroups lists. > I hope Egroups is still reading this. Maybe I'll Cc that apologizing person > as well. > I've been on this list since before I started ONElist back in 1997(I've been on various mailing lists since 1988). It's very important that as a company and as a web service, we are good netizens. That's why we monitor lists like this. That's also why we have an extensive customer support group which tries to answer all support email within an average of 4 hours(the eGroups side of the company is currently a bit slower in responses, but we're working on it). I'll be the first to admit that we've sometimes made mistakes. But they are honest mistakes, and I think as a whole we've done a good job helping our now 15 million users enjoy the power of group communication through mailing lists. But we're always striving to be better. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to email myself or Kate Shambarger, Director of Customer Support, at kate@corp.onelist.com. Thanks, Mark From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 00:02:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA28454; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 23:55:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from isrv3.isc.org (isrv3.isc.org [204.152.184.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA28441 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 23:55:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from bb.rc.vix.com (bb.rc.vix.com [204.152.187.11]) by isrv3.isc.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) via ESMTP id AAA29117 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:07:20 -0800 (PST) env-from (Peter.Losher@nominum.com) Received: from localhost (plosher@localhost) by bb.rc.vix.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) via ESMTP id AAA28712 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:07:19 -0800 (PST) env-from (Peter.Losher@nominum.com) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:07:19 -0800 (PST) From: Peter Losher To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: managing list archives... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 7 Jan 2000, Russ Allbery wrote: > The scheme of using their e-mail address and checking against the > subscriber list reduces to using their e-mail address as a password. It's > not necessary to join a mailing list to know the e-mail address of one of > the subscribers; there are other ways of obtaining that information, down > to someone just happening to mention in public that they're on a > particular mailing list and making some guesses about what address they > would be subscribed as. But the dillema faced by some of us of which I haven't seen discussed is one where you have public mailing list archives (like in support of a software product, as in my case). Our organization uses those mailing lists as a form of support ("Check the archives, as your question may have already been asked, before subscribing/posting to the list itself") The problem lies in that we just can't restrict access to these archives to subscribers; that negates a valuable resource to the user that may be able to get a quick answer to his question via the archives rather than spend time subscribing to the list, and then searching (or to ask the question on the list itself). Currently what we have resorted to is munging the headers via a function in MHonArc to add a string, so that at least you couldn't auto-harvest the addresses, but it would be easy to compensate . We have thought about just removing the addresses in the header, but there may be situations where someone would want to contact someone on the list directly (which is why we went the munging direction). This solution is also incomplete - it doesn't take care of the addresses that show up in .sig's or in the body of a message. In my head, I have thought of a better solution, to somehow have a "entry gate where they enter their email addresses and click 'ok' to a notice saying that they will not harvest the email addresses. Thus a dynamically-generated URL (w/ cookie) is created and is sent to the email address with an expiry date of 2-3 hours. Thus the general public can view the archives with relative ease, and while it's not bullet-proof in the case of spamming (nothing is, IMO), it at least balances that concern with public access. But it would be a hard thing to bring together (as an Apache Module perhaps?) I am curious to hear how others have dealt with this, and if they have any other ideas... Best Wishes - Peter | Peter Losher | SysAdmin - Nominum, Inc. | Peter.Losher@nominum.com | From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 00:17:12 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA28561; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:00:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA28526 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:00:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA69716 ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:14:45 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <3876E268.E319E480@corp.onelist.com> References: <3876E268.E319E480@corp.onelist.com> Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:06:00 -0800 To: Mark Fletcher , Tom Neff From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: avoiding egroups spam Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 11:08 PM -0800 1/7/2000, Mark Fletcher wrote: > I'll be the first to admit that we've sometimes made mistakes. But they > are honest mistakes, that's not good enough. you need to be perfect, like the rest of us, or you shouldn't do it at all. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 00:47:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id AAA28800; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:37:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id AAA28793 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:37:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA18737; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 00:50:03 -0800 (PST) To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM cc: Mark Fletcher , kate@corp.onelist.com Subject: Re: avoiding egroups spam In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 07 Jan 2000 23:08:24 -0800. <3876E268.E319E480@corp.onelist.com> Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2000 00:50:03 -0800 Message-ID: <18735.947321403@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <3876E268.E319E480@corp.onelist.com>, Mark Fletcher wrote: >That is exactly how things are supposed to work right now. Bulk list >transfers are reviewed by a human before they are done. What exactly does this ``review'' consist of? Unless you folks take out a random sample of at least 10 alleged list subscribers from the list of e-mail addresses you are given, and unless you then go and send mail to each one, asking each person in the random sample if they indeed signed up (opted in) for the list, then your ``review'' is worthless. >Unfortunately, >in this particular case, a list transfer was approved that should not >have been. OK. So what happened? >...In the case of moving >a list over from another service, in our experience, most list owners >will not do it if it requires the users to re-confirm their >subscriptions. OK, I will accept that this may be the case. But if it is, and if, as a result, you _are_ going to accept what you call ``list transfers'', then it is clear that you need to spend some time and effort verifing the opt-in nature of the lists in question. You claim you _are_ doing that, but that it didn't happen in this case. OK. Why not? >I'll be the first to admit that we've sometimes made mistakes. But they >are honest mistakes... I'm willing to accept that, *if* you are willing to be a bit more forth- coming about how this rather blatant mistake occured, and also about the other details surrounding it. Specifically: 1) How/why did this spam list get past your manual review process? 2) How many people got spammed as a result? 3) What, if anything, has happened to the perpetrator? Is eGroups still hosting lists for him? >If anyone has any questions, please feel free to email myself or Kate >Shambarger, Director of Customer Support, at kate@corp.onelist.com. Just to make sure we are clear about this, although I am CC'ing her on this message, I actually _do not_ wish to speak to anyone in your Customer Support department for one very simple reason: I am _not_ your customer. And to be perfectly frank, I get a little annoyed when companies who have spammed my try to point me at their customer services departments when I express my displeasure over being spammed. It bears repeating: I am NOT your customer. I *do not* have a question about a product or service that your company has provided to me at my request. I thus _do not_ wish to quietly wait my turn in the customer support queue. Do you have a department of corporate civic responsibility? If so, then I think that I might like to have a brief chat with _those_ folks. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 02:17:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA00834; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 02:06:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA00824 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 02:06:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 83105AF898; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 02:29:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA21105; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 02:14:57 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 02:14:56 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: Mark Fletcher , Tom Neff , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: avoiding egroups spam In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, 8 Jan 2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > I'll be the first to admit that we've sometimes made mistakes. But they > > are honest mistakes, > > that's not good enough. you need to be perfect, like the rest of us, > or you shouldn't do it at all. [ Sarcasm detection meter: Warning! Sarcasm detected in Chuq's post! ] Seriously, I for one appreciate the fact that eGroups/Onelist was willing to make that apology and explanation; I know that it is possible for smaller-scale sysadmins to make mistakes, and the sysadmins of larger systems are still only human... sooner or later, mistakes are bound to happen. It is recognizing the mistakes, learning from them, and not making them again that is what counts. As long as the folks at eGroups/Onelist recognize this and learn from what happened, that's great. They'll certainly be a step or three ahead of Microsoft, if they do. Sometimes, I think Microsoft doesn't know how to admit a mistake, much less learn from it. ;) -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 06:02:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id FAA04952; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 05:48:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id FAA04945 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 05:48:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from patroon ([160.43.47.9]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id JAA25063; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 09:00:51 -0500 (EST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Subject: re: protecting list archives Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 09:01:00 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: <200001080900.BAA29109@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Importance: Normal Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Peter Losher wrote: > But the dillema faced by some of us of which I haven't seen discussed is > one where you have public mailing list archives (like in support of a > software product, as in my case). Our organization uses those mailing > lists as a form of support ("Check the archives, as your question may have > already been asked, before subscribing/posting to the list itself") The > problem lies in that we just can't restrict access to these archives to > subscribers; that negates a valuable resource to the user that > may be able to get a quick answer to his question via the archives > rather than spend time subscribing to the list, and then searching > (or to ask the question on the list itself). That's right, but "what was that fellow's email address" is not one of the questions that you have a responsibility to answer as part of your software product support. You should never show addresses in a publicly accessible mailing list archive if you can help it. Leave the names (where possible) but hide the addresses. You can even do this in message bodies if you want to try to protect signatures. If someone is signed in as an authenticated user, then you can show them everything. I would also warn people joining the support list that their postings will be archived for public view, and that they should watch what they post, or use a spamproofed email account, or both. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 08:17:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA06203; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 08:06:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntcorp.dn.net (ntcorp.dn.net [207.226.172.79]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA06196 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 08:06:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (fidelman@localhost) by ntcorp.dn.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA08282 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 11:16:25 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 11:16:24 -0500 (EST) From: Miles Fidelman X-Sender: fidelman@ntcorp.dn.net To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? - thanks to all... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ... who've provided information. Regards, Miles ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" ************************************************************************** From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 08:46:57 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA06428; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 08:41:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA06421 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 08:41:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from default (USER28.GVA.NET [216.80.135.32]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) with ESMTP id e08GpL129530 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 11:51:22 -0500 Message-Id: <200001081651.e08GpL129530@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 11:53:49 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: re: protecting list archives In-reply-to: References: <200001080900.BAA29109@honor.greatcircle.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 8 Jan 00, at 9:01, Tom Neff wrote: > You should never show addresses in a publicly accessible mailing list > archive if you can help it. Leave the names (where possible) but hide the > addresses. You can even do this in message bodies if you want to try to > protect signatures. Hmm... Hard to do in message bodies, per se, I'd think, because there are lots of legitimate reasons why someone would include an email address in their message and so just looking for mailto URLs in the body and removing them might cripple some otherwise useful articles. But as for signatures, would just filtering off after "--" be sufficient, or is that not widely-enough accepted as a "my .sig begins here" convention to use for this purpose [and/or are too many list members probably not clueful enough to be able to get that set up properly in any event...] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 11:02:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA07471; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 10:53:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA07464 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 10:53:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from Jupiter.mcs.net (dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net [192.160.127.88]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA93774 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 13:05:30 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@Jupiter.mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Jupiter.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id NAA34406 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 13:05:30 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <200001081905.NAA34406@Jupiter.mcs.net> Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: from "Roger B.A. Klorese" at "Jan 7, 2000 11:49:21 am" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 13:05:30 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk To clear something up here: Onelist and eGroups (the corporations have merged but the services still operate separately) both have functions for add-with-confirm and direct-add. They encourage using add-with-confirm the onelist.com web site states that direct-add should be used only when one is transfering an existing list from another host. Yes, direct-add is at risk of abuse, and it has been abused, and there have been occasions on both sides where management has taken action when abuse has been reported. But whenever, in fora for discussing running lists on those hosts, someone suggests removing the direct-add feature, other listowners howl and scream that their lists need to reach a contingent of people who are too helpless with email to carry out the instructions of confirming a subscription. The objections do not come from spammers but from people running lists for non-technical topics, many of whom have actually had experiences with people lost and confused at the directions to reply to the confirmation request. (Then there are people using webmail from sites that run BigMailBox, which won't let you reply to an address that includes an equal sign and which can- not return an NDN for an undeliverable item if the envelope sender address includes an equal sign. They truly cannot reply to confirmation requests from onelist.com or egroups.com but have to follow the directions for con- firmation by HTTP instead.) Personally, I'd rather see it removed. Anyone incapable of answering email is no asset to a mailing list and probably unable to gain anything from reading a list's mail either, and anyone using a BigMailBox site should be told of its limitations and should open an additional webmail account at a site with less despotic software. [On the list for discussing the Onelist/eGroups merger, one member offered anyone who desires an additional email address to use his webmail, which runs BigMailBox. He really wasn't offering much help.] From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 15:31:57 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA10656; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:22:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA10647 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:22:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA122030 ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:37:23 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:34:44 -0800 To: "Tom Neff" , From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: re: protecting list archives Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:01 AM -0500 1/8/2000, Tom Neff wrote: > You should never show addresses in a publicly accessible mailing list > archive if you can help it. Leave the names (where possible) but hide the > addresses. You can even do this in message bodies if you want to try to > protect signatures. Well, I just did a Sherlock lookup of "chuqui@plaidworks.com", and found 65 hits, including one from a list-managers digest archive from 1997. Do you know who's disclosing your address? (grin) Some of the references are ones that, since my address is and needs to be public, are okay. But there's also that site in Australia still publically broadcasting archives of semper fi and Evangelist from years and years ago with my name blasted all over them. On the other hand, it's rather nice that none of my e-mail lists are showing up in the lists.... (a while back, I put all my archives behind a restricted robots.txt, on the assumption that the global search engines were the most likely to be hit by the harvesters. So far, that tradeoff has turned out to work pretty well, but security by obscurity isn't really a good idea long-term.... > I would also warn people joining the support list that their postings will > be archived for public view, and that they should watch what they post, or > use a spamproofed email account, or both. And also, since it comes up every once in a while, articles can't be removed from archives any more than articles can be unpublished from a newspaper.... These arguments don't happen often, but man, they can be unpleasant. I remove articles from archives under very, very restrictive circumstances, such as disclosure of proprietary information, acute hostility and abuse, or similar significant nastiness. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 15:47:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA10635; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:20:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA10622 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:20:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA27242 ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:35:00 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:28:34 -0800 To: Peter Losher , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: managing list archives... Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:07 AM -0800 1/8/2000, Peter Losher wrote: > Our organization uses those mailing > lists as a form of support ("Check the archives, as your question may have > already been asked, before subscribing/posting to the list itself") The > problem lies in that we just can't restrict access to these archives to > subscribers; that negates a valuable resource to the user that may be able > to get a quick answer to his question via the archives rather than spend > time subscribing to the list, and then searching (or to ask the question > on the list itself). In a case like this, there are a couple of ways you can deal with it. First, you can do what Apple does with it's Tech Info Library, which is to have a staff that converts issues into technical articles and stuff them into a large, searchable knowledgebase. Since it's no longer unedited e-mail, addresses become a moot point. On the negative side, there's the cost/staffing issue, but you can end up with a much higher quality content base (and you can better handle quality/accuracy/political issues) Second, the public archives could (or actually, should) be set up such that e-mail addresses are suppressed. That's the direction I'm heading for my web archives. The unauthorized space won't have e-mail addresses available. You could, I guess, go one step further and remap addresses such that they can be mailed to through your server, so mailing can be monitored and cut off if needed, and such that a user is avaialble for mailing but the address isn't disclosed. That'd be a fun engineering project, similar to what some of the anonymous remailers have done. > We have thought > about just removing the addresses in the header, but there may be > situations where someone would want to contact someone on the list > directly (which is why we went the munging direction). two sets of archives? One for list members only? > This solution is > also incomplete - it doesn't take care of the addresses that show up in > .sig's or in the body of a message. Yeah. It gets real fun, real fast.... > Thus a > dynamically-generated URL (w/ cookie) is created and is sent to the email > address with an expiry date of 2-3 hours. I know of an organization that's done this, in fact, although for software distributions, not e-mail, but the concept is the same (how do you distribute beta software under NDA and know who's downloaded it and who hasn't? And who's leaked their password to the rumor boards?) > But it would be a hard thing to bring together (as an Apache Module > perhaps?) I don't think it'd be that tough. At the least, you can put the archives behind a security realm with a password that updates ever N time units, and users can request the current password to be e-mailed them. That way, you'd have a log of everyone who's accessed, and could log which files they downloaded as well, and they couldn't futz with the validation in other than the standard ways (AOL screen names, hotmail accounts, etc...) that you really can't control anyway. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 16:02:15 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA10634; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:20:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA10617 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:20:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA27236 ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:34:59 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001081905.NAA34406@Jupiter.mcs.net> References: <200001081905.NAA34406@Jupiter.mcs.net> Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:19:18 -0800 To: "David W. Tamkin" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 1:05 PM -0600 1/8/2000, David W. Tamkin wrote: > But whenever, in fora for discussing running lists on those > hosts, someone suggests removing the direct-add feature, other listowners > howl and scream that their lists need to reach a contingent of people who > are too helpless with email to carry out the instructions of confirming a > subscription. > The objections do not come from spammers but from people running lists for > non-technical topics, many of whom have actually had experiences with people > lost and confused at the directions to reply to the confirmation request. And that's a very true problem. It's not something I talk about on this list generally, because I know what the reaction will be, but a number of months ago, I removed the mail-back validation from a number of my lists. The reason? The mail-back validation was causing huge numbers of problems, and worse, significant drop-out of subscribers (on the order of 40%). That was simply not acceptable. These days, I get about one spam/slam complaint per 50-75,000 subscriptions. On the mail-back controlled lists, I get complaints and/or help requests from users at the rate of about 1 for every 300-500 subscriptions. Maybe 1 in 250. Mailback-validations are an important tool, but they're not the panacea some make them out to be. They solve A set of e-mail problems (but potentially create other problems, as the mail-back e-mail itself can be used as an attack!), but mailbacks cause other problems. Unfortunately, the people most sensitive to these issues are also the least open to discussion about e-mail techniques, I've found. So I long ago gave up trying to discuss it. We've been very successful in building a system that makes life as easy as possible for users, both in subscribing and in unsubscribing -- the "welcome" message, for instance, includes an encoded URL that hooks into our CGI with the address already in it, so they literally can get back off with a click. Soon, we'll be encoding every piece of e-mail that way. And in the same period of time, the number of 'unsubscribe' transactions that requires some kind of manual intervention (i.e. 'me'), has dropped from 51% of the unsubscribes to 18%. The keys are (a) make it simple, keep it simple, and (b) reactive administration. The system requires administration that reacts in a timely manner as well as systems that work reliably and don't require significant technical skills. > Personally, I'd rather see it removed. Anyone incapable of answering email > is no asset to a mailing list Sorry, David, but that's a very bogus, elitist attitude. e-mail savvy does not translate to competency on other topics. It might well be true on list-managers or majordomo-owners, but why in the heck should it matter for South Bay Birds or Atlanta-Thrashers? That attitude just doesn't work well in the reality of a mainstreamed Internet. FWIW, I firmly believe that mailback validation is a useful tool, and until someone comes up with a better way of handling it, is a key technology for discussion lists, especially high-volume ones, because a slam/spam attack using a few high-volume lists can drown a user before they realize what hit them. But for smaller, quieter lists, and for moderated/announce/newsletter type things, in many cases, I've simply found mail-back validation causes more problems than it solves. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 19:47:03 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA12595; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 19:37:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA12588 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 19:37:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA47670 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 21:50:05 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@Mercury.mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id VAA35052 for list-managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 21:50:05 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <200001090350.VAA35052@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: subscribing those who cannot send email In-Reply-To: from Chuq Von Rospach at "Jan 8, 2000 03:19:18 pm" Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 21:50:05 -0600 (CST) Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When I wrote, T> Anyone incapable of answering email is no asset to a mailing list ... Chuq objected, V> Sorry, David, but that's a very bogus, elitist attitude. Not at all. People who won't write email don't contribute to the list, neither publicly nor privately. There's nothing bogus nor elitist in that. "People who need help learning how to send email will never be assets to the list" would be bogus and elitist. Perhaps my induction from inability to reply to email to inability to send email at all has exceptions, but usually it's easier (or no harder) to reply to mail one has received than to initiate a correspondence; I've more than once had people ask me to write first, or thank me for having written first, because they did not know how to send email except by replying to something they've received. I've never known of anyone capable of addressing fresh email but baffled at how to send a reply, so it's pretty safe to say that someone who can't answer a message can't send one either. V> e-mail savvy does not translate to competency on other topics. Do you think I said it did? Of course it doesn't, but if people neither post to the list nor send private replies to others' posts, then their competence on other topics, however great and renowned, does not benefit the list, and that's my point. A light hidden under a bushel doesn't show anyone else the way. Even so, the list can still be an asset to *them*, and that's usually the reason that listowners want to put these people on: for what the list can do for them rather than for what they can do for the list. Often these are new employees who have to read company announcements but don't know their way around the email system yet, or family members who should be told relatives' news even if they never speak up on the family mailing list. But I don't see what is elitist or bogus in saying that people who cannot send email do not post to mailing lists nor write to other members, so they don't do anything for the list. OK, there is an exception: if the list sells advertising space, then the eyes of lurkers are as valuable as the eyes of contributors. The fingers of mem- bers who post may be more valuable than the fingers of lurkers, because the listowner needs somewhere to insert those ads, but lurkers, even those who can't write email, are fully capable of clicking on the links or dialing the phone numbers in the ads. I have on rare occasions told an extremely con- fused newbie that (s)he is really not ready to be on a mailing list and wished him/her well while releasing him/her from the confusion that receiving my list was causing; a listowner who sells ad space would never do that. V> It might well be true on list-managers or majordomo-owners, but why in the V> heck should it matter for South Bay Birds or Atlanta-Thrashers? Do you mean, "It might well be true on lists that exist for their content, but why in the heck should it matter for lists that exist for their ad reve- nue?" Then we don't disagree. I meant that such people's subscriptions do not benefit the other members, and granted, I wasn't thinking about what they can do for the listowner. From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 8 22:44:29 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA13929; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 22:44:15 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id WAA13922 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 22:44:10 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA117792 ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 22:59:02 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001090350.VAA35052@Mercury.mcs.net> References: <200001090350.VAA35052@Mercury.mcs.net> Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 22:56:35 -0800 To: "David W. Tamkin" From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: subscribing those who cannot send email Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 9:50 PM -0600 1/8/2000, David W. Tamkin wrote: > When I wrote, > > T> Anyone incapable of answering email is no asset to a mailing list ... > > Chuq objected, > > V> Sorry, David, but that's a very bogus, elitist attitude. > > Not at all. People who won't write email don't contribute to the list, > neither publicly nor privately. First, you misrepresent my position. There's a huge difference between "won't write email" and "can't master the jargon needed to subscribe to a mailing list". And second, lists are always supported by a few people, and the majority (usually a huge majority) of users never contribute. Do you encourage kicking off members who don't post to the list, too? And third, there are more to mailing lists than discussion lists. Sigh. Here we go again. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 06:16:57 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA19871; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 06:02:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from ns1.merrywing.com (psq5.merrywing.com [207.5.185.5]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id GAA19864 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 06:02:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from Pmcintosh ([209.6.136.113]) by ns1.merrywing.com with SMTP (IPAD 2.5) id 3703000 ; Sun, 09 Jan 2000 09:15:08 -0500 Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.20000109091505.007a3ae0@pop.mv.net> X-Sender: mcintosh-lo@pop.mv.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.6 (32) Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2000 09:15:05 -0500 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Lou McIntosh Subject: Silent != second-class :) In-Reply-To: <200001090900.BAA14956@honor.greatcircle.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Somebody has said, >Not at all. People who won't write email don't contribute to the list, >neither publicly nor privately. There's nothing bogus nor elitist in that. Ah, but (1) you never know when one of them might suddenly make his first post -- this is my first-ever post :) -- and (2) no one has been in a position to judge whether I've derived benefit during the couple of years I've lurked here; and (3) certainly no one but me can tell whether my list-subscribers have benefited from the knowledge I picked up here. Chuq is right. No one should take my silence for inarticulateness, and nobody needs to arrogate unto himself the right to condemn people who don't spring to their keyboards and fire off a response every seventeenth message. I wouldn't call it "bogus" or "elitist" -- I would merely say, "fails the reality test". There, now, have I adequately misrepresented everyone's respective positions? :) Elsewhere, Bernie Cosell writes: >But as for signatures, would just filtering off after "--" be >sufficient, or is that not widely-enough accepted as a "my .sig begins >here" convention to use for this purpose [and/or are too many list >members probably not clueful enough to be able to get that set up >properly in any event...] > If you do that, you are assured of missing almost all of my very-occasional posts, because I use space-doubledash-space in the middle of my message text to signify a pause or a gasp or a parenthetical phrase or a lapse of memory -- um, where was I? From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 09:02:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA20930; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 08:50:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA20923 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 08:50:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from default (USER28.GVA.NET [216.80.135.32]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) with ESMTP id e09H0Y122009 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 12:00:34 -0500 Message-Id: <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> From: "Bernie Cosell" Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 12:03:05 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Silent != second-class :) In-reply-to: <3.0.6.32.20000109091505.007a3ae0@pop.mv.net> References: <200001090900.BAA14956@honor.greatcircle.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On 9 Jan 00, at 9:15, Lou McIntosh wrote: > Elsewhere, Bernie Cosell writes: > >But as for signatures, would just filtering off after "--" be > >sufficient, or is that not widely-enough accepted as a "my .sig begins > >here" convention.. > If you do that, you are assured of missing almost all of my > very-occasional posts, because I use space-doubledash-space in the middle > of my message text to signify a pause or a gasp or a parenthetical phrase > or a lapse of memory -- um, where was I? I think that the usual convention requires that the '-- ' occur as a line all by itself. That is, the flag is "--". OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for introducing a signature... Must be something left over from the ancient days... [I guess that the 'modern' .sig is a MIME section with one of those blasted .vcf files...] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 11:31:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA22417; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:15:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA22410 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:15:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA81428 ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:29:50 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> References: <200001090900.BAA14956@honor.greatcircle.com> <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:16:57 -0800 To: "Bernie Cosell" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Silent != second-class :) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:03 PM -0500 1/9/2000, Bernie Cosell wrote: > OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for introducing > a signature... Must be something left over from the ancient days... It's a de-facto standard introduced by the Usenet software, but I don't believe it's ever been made official in any RFC or standards doc. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 11:47:04 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id LAA22354; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:09:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from dragoncat.net (herne.dragoncat.net [216.122.4.136]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id LAA22337 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:09:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (jtraub@localhost) by dragoncat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA12475 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:21:45 -0800 Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:21:45 -0800 (PST) From: JT To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Silent != second-class :) In-Reply-To: <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Bernie Cosell wrote: > I think that the usual convention requires that the '-- ' occur as a line > all by itself. That is, the flag is "--". Yes, that is the usual convention. > OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for introducing > a signature... Must be something left over from the ancient days... [I > guess that the 'modern' .sig is a MIME section with one of those blasted > .vcf files...] Actually, it's mentioned (in passing) in an RFC about usenet messages. It is not called out as a standard for email anywhere (yes, I went and looked :) --JT -- [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. ] [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ] [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 13:20:17 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA23281; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 13:07:51 -0800 (PST) Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.12.23]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id NAA23274 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 13:07:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 15886 invoked by uid 50); 9 Jan 2000 21:20:21 -0000 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Silent != second-class :) References: In-Reply-To: JT's message of "Sun, 9 Jan 2000 11:21:45 -0800 (PST)" From: Russ Allbery Organization: The Eyrie Date: 09 Jan 2000 13:20:21 -0800 Message-ID: Lines: 21 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) XEmacs/21.1 (Biscayne) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk JT writes: > On Sun, 9 Jan 2000, Bernie Cosell wrote: >> OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for >> introducing a signature... Must be something left over from the >> ancient days... [I guess that the 'modern' .sig is a MIME section with >> one of those blasted .vcf files...] > Actually, it's mentioned (in passing) in an RFC about usenet messages. > It is not called out as a standard for email anywhere (yes, I went and > looked :) I don't believe it is; neither "--" nor the string "signature" appear anywhere in RFC 1036. It is mentioned in Son-of-RFC-1036, but that was at most an Internet Draft, never an RFC. It's mentioned in passing in the current USEFOR draft and in RFC 2646 (text/plain; format=flowed specification). -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 14:03:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id NAA23497; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 13:45:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA23490 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 13:45:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA71939 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 15:58:24 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@Mercury.mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id PAA03636 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 15:58:24 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <200001092158.PAA03636@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: inability to send email != joining+lurking In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20000109091505.007a3ae0@pop.mv.net> from Lou McIntosh at "Jan 9, 2000 09:15:05 am" Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 15:58:24 -0600 (CST) Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk When I wrote, T> Not at all. People who won't write email don't contribute to the list, T> neither publicly nor privately. There's nothing bogus nor elitist in that. Lou responded, M> Ah, but (1) you never know when one of them might suddenly make his first M> post -- this is my first-ever post :) It's not just a matter of someone's first post, it's also a matter of some- one's first email. Remember, I wasn't talking about all people who don't post to the list but solely about people who absolutely cannot write any email at all and thus won't respond to a confirmation request and have to be forcibly added. That's not just no email to the list; it's no email at all. When they receive a confirmation request for joining a list because the list- owner used add-with-confirm instead of direct-add, they don't follow through, because selecting Reply and then Send in their MUAs is too daunting. Will they some day get past that fear? Perhaps. Then they can confirm sub- scriptions and perhaps post as well. For now, if they can't confirm, how can we be sure they actually want to be on the list? M> -- and (2) no one has been in a position to judge whether I've derived M> benefit during the couple of years I've lurked here; That's right; I said that even if they are not assets to the list, the list might be an asset to them. But didn't you join list-managers because you wanted to, Lou? And didn't your act of joining involve your sending some email, either the Majordomo command for joining or a request to the list manager to put you on? Unless someone has expressed an interest in joining, where does the listowner get off deciding that another person will benefit from the list and adding him or her in a way that doesn't require any sort of agreement or confirmation from the person being added? What is the listown- er's motive in doing so? When I said that people who cannot send any email at all are not assets to the list, what I meant was that the membership at large will gain nothing from such a person's being on. (After all, such a person won't write private responses to others' posts either.) The listown- er's motive in adding such a person is clearly not what such a person will do for the members. So what is it? More eyeballs to claim when selling ads, perhaps? Or is the listowner a spammer? There are some legitimate exceptions: the person may have asked the listowner to add him/her by some other means of communication than email. Maybe it is a corporate announcement list that all employees are required to read, or an academic list that all students must be on. But I would imagine that nearly all of the last two cases are lists running on the company's or the schools' own servers, not on Onelist or eGroups, and it was listowners on Onelist whom I've seen howl at the notion of removing direct-add, complaining that they need it specifically to get people onto their lists who are so helpless with email that they cannot select Reply and Send to answer a confirmation request. M> ... and (3) certainly no one but me can tell whether my list-subscribers M> have benefited from the knowledge I picked up here. Remember, the people under discussion are those who cannot email at all, not those who join lists and lurk. How many people who cannot send email at all run mailing lists of their own? I'd guess none. It is way off-base to stretch my words about people who fear to send email and who therefore must be forcibly added to mailing lists to apply to those who voluntarily join lists and then lurk. M> No one should take my silence for inarticulateness, ... Nobody did. Even people who cannot send email might be articulate when they speak or when they write on paper. M> ... and nobody needs to arrogate unto himself the right to condemn people M> who don't spring to their keyboards and fire off a response every M> seventeenth message. Nobody did. Those who cannot send email at all are not being "condemned" here. I said simply that they won't be enriching the list, even if the list enriches them, or they enrich the listowner. M> There, now, have I adequately misrepresented everyone's respective M> positions? :) Let's see: you've called my words about people who cannot send email a con- demnation, and you've said my alleged condemnation includes people who lurk after having put out proactive effort to opt into a list. I can't speak for Chuq or Ron or anyone else involved, Lou, but you've done an excellent job of misrepresenting mine. Take that as a compliment if you'd like. From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 21:48:30 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA26883; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:53 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA26861 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from queernet.queernet.org (queernet.queernet.org [170.1.118.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA24726 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:23:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rogerk@localhost) by queernet.queernet.org (8.10.0.Beta6/8.10.0.Beta6) with ESMTP id e081ZM223658 Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:35:17 -0800 (PST) From: "Roger B.A. Klorese" To: Tim Pierce cc: "Ronald F. Guilmette" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <20000107202901.O25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Tim Pierce wrote: > Except when the subscribe requests is sent by the list manager. I agree > with Roger -- I am not aware of any mailing list package which requires > confirmation from the subscriber even when the list manager initiated the > subscribe request. And considering I'm now the product manager for a forthcoming commercial MLM...! (To which I added the requirement today that the site or domain admin can set minimum levels.) -- ROGER B.A. KLORESE rogerk@QueerNet.ORG urgent: rogerk-page@QueerNet.ORG PO Box 14309 San Francisco, CA 94114 +1 415 ALL-ARFF "There is only one real blasphemy -- the refusal of joy!" -- Paul Rudnick From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 21:59:11 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA26896; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:58 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA26873 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA24673 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:17:14 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e081T1M31886; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 20:29:01 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 20:29:01 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Cc: "Roger B.A. Klorese" , List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted Message-ID: <20000107202901.O25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <15794.947277745@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <15794.947277745@monkeys.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, Jan 07, 2000 at 12:42:25PM -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > As far as I know, every modern off-the-shelf list management package now > provides, at the very least, an option which, when set, will cause the > list management package to send, via E-mail, SOME SORT of confirmation > request to each alleged new subscriber and to wait for a suitable response > BEFORE finalizing the subscription. Except when the subscribe requests is sent by the list manager. I agree with Roger -- I am not aware of any mailing list package which requires confirmation from the subscriber even when the list manager initiated the subscribe request. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:01:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA27032; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:24 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id UAA26932 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from liv-26.outlawnet.com (as1-56.dial-IP.EmpireNet.net [208.44.71.56]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id RAA24963 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:51:49 -0800 (PST) Received: by liv-26.outlawnet.com (NX5.67f2/NX3.0M) id AA02379; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:57:00 -0800 Message-Id: <200001080157.AA02379@liv-26.outlawnet.com> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v148.2.1) Received: by NeXT.Mailer (1.148.2.1) From: garyb@fxt.com Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:56:57 -0800 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: e: managing list archives... Reply-To: garyb@fxt.com References: <200001080030.QAA23364@honor.greatcircle.com> X-Bickford-List-Subscribe: mailto:bickford-talk-on@bickford.org Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Somebody said, > Hmm. you have a good point. While this would nuke out the spammers, > since they couldn't get an email address without first subscribing > SOME legal address to the list, it doesn't solve the "kicked out > getting even" attack scenario, because they would have had access to > mail where they could get someone else's address from. > > So it's no better than the "password on the web site" solution, but a > lot more work. > > Anyone see a way to fix this? I don't, unfortunately. thanks, Mitch. > Saves me a buncha work for little real benefit. > Actually, IFF folks keep their original subscription confirmation around (we all do, don't we? :O), they will have a ready-made password for archives access - the unique key used for the confirmation reply. Once logged in they can have a cookie to avoid having to log in every time. If Mr. GettingEven is blocked from the list, it's pretty straight forward to block him from the website by dropping his name/confirmation code from the access control system. G G From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:07:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA27723; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 21:26:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from ma-1.rootsweb.com (ma-1.rootsweb.com [209.192.148.153]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA27716 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 21:26:31 -0800 (PST) Received: (from twp@localhost) by ma-1.rootsweb.com (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) id e0A5cns63211; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 00:38:49 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 00:38:49 -0500 From: Tim Pierce To: Bernie Cosell Cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Silent != second-class :) Message-ID: <20000110003849.S25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> References: <200001090900.BAA14956@honor.greatcircle.com> <3.0.6.32.20000109091505.007a3ae0@pop.mv.net> <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.7us In-Reply-To: <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sun, Jan 09, 2000 at 12:03:05PM -0500, Bernie Cosell wrote: > > I think that the usual convention requires that the '-- ' occur as a line > all by itself. That is, the flag is "--". That's right. > OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for introducing > a signature... Must be something left over from the ancient days... [I > guess that the 'modern' .sig is a MIME section with one of those blasted > .vcf files...] I thought the hyphen-hyphen-space convention was mentioned in RFC 1036, but perhaps I'm thinking of the orphaned son-of-1036 draft. Now I can't find any official recommendation for signature delimiters. It's a shame. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:15:06 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA27061; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:48 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id UAA27051 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from liv-26.outlawnet.com (as1-56.dial-IP.EmpireNet.net [208.44.71.56]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id KAA07312 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 10:37:19 -0800 (PST) Received: by liv-26.outlawnet.com (NX5.67f2/NX3.0M) id AA03365; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 10:42:44 -0800 Message-Id: <200001081842.AA03365@liv-26.outlawnet.com> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v148.2.1) Received: by NeXT.Mailer (1.148.2.1) From: garyb@fxt.com Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 10:42:41 -0800 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V9 #5 Reply-To: garyb@fxt.com References: <200001080900.BAA29109@honor.greatcircle.com> X-Bickford-List-Subscribe: mailto:bickford-talk-on@bickford.org Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >> and violation of California law The dangerous thing that spammers are causing is the possible demand for active government intervention. We must recall that it is technically possible for a government to require all network providers to block any traffic to or from a particular network. Case in point - Bosnia. NATO pondered whether to block Bosnian traffic, decided finally to let it continue. Almost as easy would be to block, for example, all egroups traffic from California. Anger at SPAM could increase to the point where people forget the implications of blocking others' speech and demand a law that requires network providers to block traffic from organizations that break California law against SPAM. Maybe that's a reasonable penalty. But what if California passes a law to block traffic from radical (pick YOUR cause) groups that use violent means? Down the slope we go. People tend to forget that despite the illusion of anonymity and free access, the structure of the net is such that it is not hard to figure out who, where and what you are when enough resources are thrown at the problem. You'll note how fast a couple of recent virus perps were tracked down. From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:18:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA26795; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA26787 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from egroups.net (teapot.egroups.net [63.76.160.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id LAA19854 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:38:35 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 20375 invoked from network); 7 Jan 2000 19:50:48 -0000 Received: from dhcp73.corp.onelist.com (HELO egroups.net) (192.168.10.173) by teapot.egroups.net with SMTP; 7 Jan 2000 19:50:48 -0000 Message-ID: <38764391.C26BFB28@egroups.net> Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 11:50:41 -0800 From: Dru Nelson X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" CC: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com, ops@egroups.net, eng@egroups.net Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted References: <15443.947272700@monkeys.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi Ron, My name is Dru and I work at eGroups as the Director of Network Operations. You may not remember me, but you called me a while back (Feb. 98) for some free consulting on your escrub machine. (I built you a Freebsd kernel that could handle the large numbers of descriptors that you needed). I supported your efforts for a few weeks until my work was done. Let me assure you that all of the people here at eGroups (including myself) take spam very seriously. You have already gotten a lot of contacts to people high up in the company that are willing to help, I just wanted to give you my word as well. Take care, "Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote: > In message <4.2.1.20000107073356.00cbe840@mail.imc.org>, > Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote: > > >At 11:39 PM 1/6/00 -0800, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > >>Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up > >> to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming > >>lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! > > -- Dru Nelson Director of Network Operations http://www.egroups.com/ Voice: 415-546-2740 From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:33:02 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA26963; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:10 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id TAA26886 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:59:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from mx1.eskimo.com (mx1.eskimo.com [204.122.16.48]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA24739 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:24:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from eskimo.com (eskimo.com [204.122.16.13]) by mx1.eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA10012; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:36:15 -0800 Received: from localhost (michj@localhost) by eskimo.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id RAA01303; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:36:15 -0800 (PST) X-Authentication-Warning: eskimo.com: michj owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 17:36:14 -0800 (PST) From: "Michael S. Johnson" To: List-Managers list cc: hostman@egroups.net, webmaster@egroups.com, abuse@egroups.com Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > In other words, still allow the list admin to subscribe anyone, since too > many legitimate lists use it, and in the 'you joined' notice message, > offer not only a way to unsubscribe (since often times when they get the > unsubscribe notice, malicious users of those systems will simply > resubscribe you) but a way to say 'regardless of what the list admin says, > I want off this list permanently'. > Another possibility, since I know Onelist and eGroups both store all list > subscriptions for an address in a single account, and you can set global > settings for yourself... why not have a setting on the account that says > 'I want to /always/ be asked for confirmation, even if the list admin > subscribes me manually'? These solutions assume a few things: * the service doesn't require an annoying registration process to grant a user access to hir subscription preferences (1: which currently requires a web browser that, despite aggressive advertising, is not something all persons with an e-mail address are guaranteed to have or want to use; 2: a user can be subscribed to an eGroup-like list without being a registered user of the eGroups-like service) * the service wants to set aside space and CPU to store opt-out lists of millions of such users (this would require dev time above and beyond what is necessary for an eGroups-like service to be up and running and profitable) * that no trusted centralized opt-out service exists (spammers have devalued the concept of opting-in to an opt-out list by hosting their own for the purpose of harvesting valid e-mail addresses) * that users will be willing to tolerate the effort of actively opting- out of each undesired list, as opposed to automatically being not subscribed when a confirmation ticket is purposefully ignored and allowed to expire Remember: people are generally lazy or distrustful. Too lazy to tolerate manually opting out of every spam. Too distrustful to give their address to Yet Another Opt-Out List that doesn't effectively decrease the amount of spam received. -- Michael From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:43:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA27033; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:28 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id UAA26990 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:00:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from ifolk.iserver.net (ifolk.iserver.net [192.41.44.203]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA25157 for ; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 18:03:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from SOUTINE2K (adsl-151-202-20-126.bellatlantic.net [151.202.20.126]) by ifolk.iserver.net (8.8.5) id VAA16631; Fri, 7 Jan 2000 21:16:07 -0500 (EST) From: "Tom Neff" To: Cc: "Mark Fletcher" Subject: Re: avoiding egroups spam Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 21:16:19 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200001080030.QAA23364@honor.greatcircle.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Jeremy Blackman writes: > In other words, still allow the list admin to subscribe anyone, since too > many legitimate lists use it, and in the 'you joined' notice message, > offer not only a way to unsubscribe (since often times when they get the > unsubscribe notice, malicious users of those systems will simply > resubscribe you) but a way to say 'regardless of what the list admin says, > I want off this list permanently'. Unfortunately this probably won't work. Spammers will not be inconvenienced by it in the least, since they can continue to paste thousands of addresses in the mass-subscribe hole and add people to the FREE MONEY NOW list -- immediately followed by the inaugural FREE MONEY message itself of course -- secure in the knowledge that only a fraction of the victims will bother to remove themselves... and that anyone who does has just verified a "GOLD!" email address in the process. (The classic Opt-Out Fallacy in action) Legitimate list owners are probably already providing their legitimate members with enough info on removing themselves as it is, without extra help from the Half-Measures Dept. I understand that there is a legitimate need (especially but not only in Egroups's eyes) for legitimate listowners to be able to PORT their lists over to Egroups from another service or software package. The trick is how to distinguish this from spammers doing mass subscribes of victims. I have a few suggestions for Egroups to consider. One suggestion is that the number of LEGITIMATE wholesale list migrations to Egroups from elsewhere, per day, could not be very large. A customer service representative inspecting the transaction would probably have very little difficulty telling the difference between, say, Model-Rockets-L changing homes, versus SCHWING-XXX DIET SUPPLEMENT trying to add 9,000 people from AOL. So you tell list owners that bulk subscribes take a day to process, and you vet them before saying yes. If you have any doubts you request further verification. Another suggestion is that Egroups should take care to "salt" the web with telltale marker email addresses (which are never disclosed), the appearance of any one of which in a bulk subscribe becomes prima facie evidence of a rip job. A third suggestion is that, for any given list, mass migrations are RARE. Therefore it would be reasonable, if a bulk subscribe passes all other kosherness tests, to send an OPT-IN message - containing NO material written by the list manager whatsoever beyond the name of the list and the manager - to each address in the bulk subscribe list, requesting a mailed or webbed confirm before their subscription takes effect. Now, THIS message could contain as one of the possible responses "no, and never send me one of these opt-ins again either." That would cover the abuse case where you find yourself saying no-thanks to eight opt-ins a week. Remember that any LEGITIMATE list owner who plans to migrate her or his list to Egroups has ample opportunity beforehand to tell all the members, ON THE OLD LIST, what is happening and what they need to do to make sure they're included in the move. (In fact, Egroups could provide a standard form of this announcement for cut+paste by list managers as part of a "Migration Kit.") I hope Egroups is still reading this. Maybe I'll Cc that apologizing person as well. -- Tom Neff From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 22:49:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA27097; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:01:04 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id UAA27087 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 20:01:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.121.12]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA10523 for ; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:01:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from lw1 (dialup-209.244.101.165.NewYork2.Level3.net [209.244.101.165]) by harrier.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id PAA23039; Sat, 8 Jan 2000 15:14:14 -0800 (PST) Reply-To: From: "Tom Baurley" To: Subject: archiving, confirmations, and attachments Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 18:13:14 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <200001070900.BAA10473@honor.greatcircle.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Greets all - I am new to majorodomo and have been moving over a large amount of lists from a virtual host to our colocated server. I've had an interesting experience with installation to say the least. I've however encountered some configuration/customization issues that was not really outlined well in the faqs. Was curious if anyone has any resources they could share, especially in terms of an online tutorial or guide: 1. Setting up archiving and digesting I've followed what's in the faqs and the Managing Mailing Lists book, but the features don't seem to work right. Digesting collects the messages in the digests folders, but can't seem to get the digest to mail out to the list. Archiving folder remains empty so I don't figure it's working. Thoughts? 2. Confirmations what's the best way to change the confirmation message (not the welcome)? Is there a way to require confirmations but just as a simple reply message instead of the default authentication code? 3. Is there a way to suppress attachments? (besides by limiting file size) Thanks in advance, Tom Baurley tom@baurley.com > -----Original Message----- > From: list-managers-digest-owner@GreatCircle.COM > [mailto:list-managers-digest-owner@GreatCircle.COM] > Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 4:00 AM > To: list-managers-digest@GreatCircle.COM > Subject: List-Managers-Digest V9 #3 > > > > List-Managers-Digest Friday, January 7 2000 Volume 09 : > Number 003 > > > > In this issue: > > Majordomo Hosting ( Help ) > can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > aol.com not compliant with RFC 1893 > Re: Majordomo Hosting ( Help ) > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: aol.com not compliant with RFC 1893 > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > experiences with mail merge and scheduling in MLMs > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: experiences with mail merge and scheduling in MLMs > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted > > See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the > List-Managers > or List-Managers-Digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 01:54:45 -0800 > From: Robert Payne > Subject: Majordomo Hosting ( Help ) > > My Majordomo host rolled over into Topica. > > The Topica service doesn't meet our club needs. > > I need help locating a new Majordomo host for our club of 330 plus > > We need a Majordomo server that will allow a monthly PDF news letter > attachment of at least 1.0Mb > > Allow hassle free list management with replace list commands > so I can run the list straight from the club data base. > > Is reliable, secure and not outrageously expensive. Just like the list I > had at Esosoft > > > > Robert Payne > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:33:25 -0500 (EST) > From: Miles Fidelman > Subject: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > Hi Folks, > > I've been doing a lot of looking at replacing my current majordomo > installation with a new list manager. I'd been looking at majordomo2, > mailman, and sympa - none of which seem quite right for my needs (virtual > domains, making it easier for users to set up mailing lists). > > Lyris seems to do it all, but it costs serious dollars, and isn't > open-source. > > EZMLM seems to do a lot of the right things, but requires switching to > qmail. > > Has anybody gone through a transition from majordomo/sendmail to > ezmlm/qmail? Can you comment on how hard it was, things to watch out for, > whether it was worth it? > > Thanks very much, > > Miles Fidelman > > ************************************************************************** > The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 > Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA > 02460-0006 > Director, Municipal Telecommunications > Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 > mfidelman@civicnet.org > http://civic.net/ccn.html > > Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century > Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere > Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" > ************************************************************************** > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 15:58:50 +0100 > From: Olivier Salaun - CRU > Subject: aol.com not compliant with RFC 1893 > > Hi, > > We are developing a non-delivery reports analyzer for Sympa MLM. > This module already extracts bouncing address and error status for more > than 90% of "bounces". The goal is to provide information about > bouncing addresses within a web interface (WWSympa) for list-owners. > > Analysis is mainly based on RFCs 1891-1894 defining a MIME extension > for Delivery Status Notifications, allowing (automatic) identification > of recipients and error status. > > RFC 1893 defines Mail System Status Codes to be used by MTAs. > Eg: 5.1.1 => User unknown ; 5.2.2 => Mailbox full > > I found out that aol.com is not compatible with status codes as > defined in RFC 1893. As you can see in the sample bellow, the > transcript of session indicates a 'User Unkown' whereas "Status" > field of the delivery-status indicates a Success (2.0.0). This > completely alter the analysis of error reports ! > > Did anyone already observe such problems with other ISPs ? > > > - -------------- > Olivier Salaün > > Here is a sample Delivery Status Notification : > > Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status; > boundary="BOUNDARY" > > --BOUNDARY > > ----- Transcript of session follows ----- > ... while talking to xxx.mail.aol.com.: > >>> RCPT To: > <<< 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND > 550 ... User unknown > > --BOUNDARY > Content-Type: message/delivery-status > > Reporting-MTA: dns; listes.cru.fr > Arrival-Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:22:43 +0100 (MET) > > Final-Recipient: rfc822; yyy@aol.com. > Action: failed > Status: 2.0.0 > Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 250 OK > > --BOUNDARY > Content-Type: text/rfc822-headers > > --BOUNDARY > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:14:24 -0000 > From: "Becky" > Subject: Re: Majordomo Hosting ( Help ) > > Hi Robert, > > Believe me when I say I sympathise. I was also at Esosoft and jumped ship > three days after the Topica announcement. I moved to Halisp and have been > pretty happy although there was a small probably right after the New Year. > However support was good an it was straightened out quickly. They are at: > http://www.halisp.net/halisp/mailprice.html > > Also you might recall the MLA list which was for list owners and run by > Esosoft. This list was shut down the Esosoft one hour after the topica > announcement. We tried to reach as many other list-owners as we could but > only managed about 10%. The MLA people moved to a list called > EUG at Onelist > in order to provide support for each other. I would suggest that you join > this list. Many of the members have gone with VS servers run by other > list-owners who were with Esosoft and for the same price and very little > hassle. > > Good Luck > > Becky > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 08:51:44 -0800 (PST) > From: JT > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > I've been doing a lot of looking at replacing my current majordomo > > installation with a new list manager. I'd been looking at majordomo2, > > mailman, and sympa - none of which seem quite right for my needs > > (virtual domains, making it easier for users to set up mailing lists). > > You might consider looking at Listar as well (http://www.listar.org/) > It would take a little work by the site admin to get it set up so that > users could set up their own lists, but it should be doable. > > - --JT > > - -- > [----------------------------------------------------------------- > --------] > [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. > ] > [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the > morning ] > [----------------------------------------------------------------- > --------] > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 09:02:32 -0800 (PST) > From: Peter Losher > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > > EZMLM seems to do a lot of the right things, but requires switching to > > qmail. > > I would also suggest looking at Listar (http://www.listar.org/) It does > what you are looking for in your message, and it's MTA independent (I used > it under Sendmail before going to Postfix and Listar works beautifully > under both MTA's) > > And it's open source :) > > Best Wishes -Peter > (A satisfied user) > > | Peter Losher | SysAdmin - Nominum, Inc. | Peter.Losher@nominum.com | > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 12:36:16 -0500 (EST) > From: Miles Fidelman > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > JT and Peter Losher both suggested I look at Listar. > > To which I ask two followup questions: > > - - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with > the virtual > user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres) - is > that correct? > > - - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with > qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the qmail "global > alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do > everything automagically - again, is this correct? > > Thanks, > > Miles > > ************************************************************************** > The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 > Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA > 02460-0006 > Director, Municipal Telecommunications > Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 > mfidelman@civicnet.org > http://civic.net/ccn.html > > Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century > Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere > Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" > ************************************************************************** > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:13:08 -0500 (EST) > From: Dave Sill > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > Miles Fidelman wrote: > > > >Has anybody gone through a transition from majordomo/sendmail to > >ezmlm/qmail? Can you comment on how hard it was, things to > watch out for, > >whether it was worth it? > > ezmlm (with the ezmlm-idx add-on) makes Majordomo look like a bad > hack. Likewise for qmail vs. sendmail. > > I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I > think ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, reliability, > and manageability, and it's well worth the effort to switch. > > I recommend installing ezmlm+qmail on your existing list server (just > don't install qmail-smtpd (on port 25) or qmail's "sendmail"). That'll > allow you to play with qmail and ezmlm without interfering with your > majordomo+sendmail setup. > > Once you've migrated the lists to ezmlm, you can turn off sendmail and > install qmail-smtpd. > > Painless and low risk. > > See: > > http://Web.InfoAve.Net/~dsill/lwq.html > > For help installing qmail. > > - -Dave > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:44 -0800 (PST) > From: JT > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with > the virtual > > user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and > postgres) - is > > that correct? > > Yes, but that could be handled by a wrapper script which when invoked > set up the virtual domain files for the MTA, set up the config file > for the virual host for listar, invoked listar -newlist with that correct > virtual host config file, and then put the output of that in the right > form for the MTA aliases file. > > > - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with > > qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the > qmail "global > > alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do > > everything automagically - again, is this correct? > > I don't know anything personally about qmail, so I will leave that to > someone else to answer. EZMLM most certainly does some things > automagically, but that's because it's part and parcel with qmail and > unlike listar won't work with anything but (or so I am given > to understand). > > - --JT > > [----------------------------------------------------------------- > --------] > [ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. > ] > [ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the > morning ] > [----------------------------------------------------------------- > --------] > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:33:25 -0800 (PST) > From: Jeremy Blackman > Subject: Re: aol.com not compliant with RFC 1893 > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Olivier Salaun - CRU wrote: > > > I found out that aol.com is not compatible with status codes as > > defined in RFC 1893. As you can see in the sample bellow, the > > transcript of session indicates a 'User Unkown' whereas "Status" > > field of the delivery-status indicates a Success (2.0.0). This > > completely alter the analysis of error reports ! > > > > Did anyone already observe such problems with other ISPs ? > > Yes; welcome to my personal hell. After discovering that /only/ Sendmail > actually implements the RFC1893 spec completely correctly, I gave up and > wrote a temporary method for Listar that just parses certain specific > bounce formats, and then tries to determine the information if it is not a > bounce format it recognizes. > > I am currently trying to come up with a much more general way that will > work with the busted MIME information I have seen in several bounce > messages. I would fold that parser into Listar again, but I would also be > happy to work with others to make a bounce parser that is more > general-purpose and could be folded into other packages as well. > > - -- > Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / > jeremy@lith.com > Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com > Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 11:40:43 -0800 (PST) > From: Jeremy Blackman > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > > - it looks like Listar still requires some manual playing with > the virtual > > user and alias databases (at least with sendmail, exim, and postgres) > > is that correct? > > This is true for pretty much anything that is MTA-independent. Listar > does generate the data for you, though, and you can just paste it into the > appropriate file. I have all my Listar aliases in a 'listar.aliases' > file, and so when I make a new list, I just do: > > listar -newlist mylist >> listar.aliases > > And the new aliases are added properly, and then I just rebuild the > aliases file. This works for qmail using the Sendmail-compatible aliases > module, as well. > > > - it looks like Listar will generate all the files needed to work with > > qmail, but requires that some info be manually added to the > qmail "global > > alias file" - this is different behavior than ezmlm, which seems to do > > everything automagically - again, is this correct? > > Listar does not run as root; in fact, the code checks and actively demotes > itself back down to lose root permissions if you try to run it as root, > logging a warning. As a result, though, the .qmail- files cannot be > placed in the ~alias directory for qmail, if you tell Listar to create > them. This means you have to become root and copy them over to the qmail > global aliases directory... but that is a matter of a 'cp' command. :) > > ezmlm can do everything automagically because it links directly into the > mailserver. Listar, the goal was to not tie it to any one package. :) > > The place where ezmlm beats everything else, hands down, is that > individual users can create their own ezmlm lists in their own > directories, since they can create per-user aliases. Listar could > probably be made to work with qmail per-user aliases (or the Postfix > delimited-forward files, for that matter) but would need to be modified to > run as the user; that is something on the todo list already. > > - -- > Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / > jeremy@lith.com > Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com > Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 13:46:09 -0700 > From: "Marsha Petry" > Subject: experiences with mail merge and scheduling in MLMs > > I've only been on this list for a short time, so please feel free to > redirect me to another list if this is off-topic for this list... > > I'm looking for an MLM (or alternatives would be considered) that could > handle the following: > > 1. scheduling sends of moderated messages (ie send out message x at 1am, > messages y,z at 2am etc...). > > This one I can find in most MLMs in varying forms but I also need this: > > 2. mail merge capability. I prefer to be able to send a message > template, a > control file, and a data file to a "merger" that would make substitutions > from the data file into the message template based on directions from the > control file. Extracting the data from a database would be > another option. > > Anybody have some experiences in this area as to what would be a good MLM > for these needs? I've looked at Majordomo, Listar, Sympa, > Listproc, ezmlm, > Listserv (and unless I've missed some documentation on the others Listserv > is the closest to what I need, and that's what I may opt for, though it's > pretty pricey). > > If no MLM fits my needs, any suggestions on what open source code might be > the best to look at as far as modifying for my needs? Someone on > the ezmlm > list suggested modifying qmail for the mail merge feature - > sounds OK. Any > other experiences? > > Thanks in advance for your help. > > Marsha Petry > mpetry@uswest.net > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:23:24 -0500 (EST) > From: Miles Fidelman > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Jeremy Blackman wrote: > > > The place where ezmlm beats everything else, hands down, is that > > individual users can create their own ezmlm lists in their own > > directories, since they can create per-user aliases. Listar could > > probably be made to work with qmail per-user aliases (or the Postfix > > delimited-forward files, for that matter) but would need to be > modified to > > run as the user; that is something on the todo list already. > > this is more along the lines I've been looking for - any idea when this > might make its way into listar? > > Miles > > ************************************************************************** > The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 > Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA > 02460-0006 > Director, Municipal Telecommunications > Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 > mfidelman@civicnet.org > http://civic.net/ccn.html > > Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century > Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere > Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" > ************************************************************************** > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:18:31 -0500 (EST) > From: Miles Fidelman > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > Brian, > > Thanks very much for the reply. It's sounding more and more like a switch > to qmail and ezmlm is in the cards. > > A few followup questions: > > > First, the switch to qmail - it alone is well worth it, even if > you stick > > with majordomo. > > Are there any gotchas I should watch out for, and/or any suggestions for a > smooth transition - first from sendmail to qmail (while keeping my > majordomo lists functional) and then from majordomo to ezmlm? > Unfortunately, I have to do this on a single, leased host that's > supporting ongoing operations - ideally, I'd like to figure out a way to > run both systems in parallel and do a rolling cutover domain-by-domain. > > Thanks again, > > Miles > > ************************************************************************** > The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 > Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA > 02460-0006 > Director, Municipal Telecommunications > Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 > mfidelman@civicnet.org > http://civic.net/ccn.html > > Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century > Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere > Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" > ************************************************************************** > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 15:13:17 -0800 (PST) > From: Jeremy Blackman > Subject: Re: experiences with mail merge and scheduling in MLMs > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Marsha Petry wrote: > > > Anybody have some experiences in this area as to what would be > a good MLM > > for these needs? I've looked at Majordomo, Listar, Sympa, > Listproc, ezmlm, > > Listserv (and unless I've missed some documentation on the > others Listserv > > is the closest to what I need, and that's what I may opt for, > though it's > > pretty pricey). > > Listserv does what you need out-of-box, though it can be a royal nightmare > to set up that way at times and is a bit pricey, as you note. > > I /think/ Lyris can also do this, and is probably slightly less pricey. > > > If no MLM fits my needs, any suggestions on what open source > code might be > > the best to look at as far as modifying for my needs? Someone > on the ezmlm > > list suggested modifying qmail for the mail merge feature - > sounds OK. Any > > other experiences? > > Well, for my own part, I can suggest Listar (surprise) for modification > simply because the whole thing is based around a dynamic and extendable > architecture. Writing a 'mailmerge.lpm' to plug-in could cover your need > there fairly well, though you will then have to send each message > separately... not /as/ bad as it could be, though, if you are running > qmail (as it would seem). Listar already has hooks for per-user message > modification, but nothing implements functionality on those hooks yet; the > mail merge concept would be one that could make use of that. > > Of course, I will readily admit that my viewpoint is biased; JT and I > wrote Listar that way specifically so we could add new features (or other > people could) as needed without having to change the core code. > > - -- > Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / > jeremy@lith.com > Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com > Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org > > ------------------------------ > > Date: 06 Jan 2000 16:22:20 -0800 > From: Russ Allbery > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > Miles Fidelman writes: > > > Are there any gotchas I should watch out for, and/or any suggestions for > > a smooth transition - first from sendmail to qmail (while keeping my > > majordomo lists functional) and then from majordomo to ezmlm? > > For help on running majordomo under qmail, see my FAQ: > > > - -- > Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) > > ------------------------------ > > Date: 06 Jan 2000 16:21:26 -0800 > From: Russ Allbery > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > Dave Sill writes: > > > I've used majordomo+sendmail, majordomo+qmail, and ezmlm+qmail. I think > > ezmlm+qmail is the best in terms of performance, reliability, and > > manageability, and it's well worth the effort to switch. > > The sendmail vs. qmail switch depends a lot on both how experienced you > are with setting up mail systems and how much you think like qmail. qmail > is a package which seems to be highly intuitive for some people (far more > intuitive than any other MTA) and at the same time highly unintuitive for > other people. Dave's Life With qmail document is highly recommended. > qmail is very much unlike sendmail. > > As for ezmlm vs. majordomo, well, I'm currently maintaining the majordomo > with qmail FAQ and I'm considering switching to ezmlm instead. :) You > want the -idx version so that the old majordomo commands still work as > your users expect them to, and there are definitely some interesting > differences in how ezmlm does things, but the automatic bounce management > all by itself is probably worth the price of admission. > > I don't have experience with mailing list software other than majordomo > and ezmlm, so I'll leave the additional recommendations to other folks. > > - -- > Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 19:37:37 -0500 (EST) > From: Miles Fidelman > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > Dave, > > A followup question: > > On Thu, 6 Jan 2000, Dave Sill wrote: > > I recommend installing ezmlm+qmail on your existing list server (just > > don't install qmail-smtpd (on port 25) or qmail's "sendmail"). That'll > > allow you to play with qmail and ezmlm without interfering with your > > majordomo+sendmail setup. > > > > Once you've migrated the lists to ezmlm, you can turn off sendmail and > > install qmail-smtpd. > > any thoughts on how to get sendmail/majordomo and qmail/ezmlm to run at > the same time - each serving some lists > > as far as I can tell, I can't configure both sendmail and qmail to listen > on port 25 - each listening for different things > > so.. it seems like what I'd have to do is have either sendmail or qmail do > the smtp listening, and hand off a range of addresses to the other > program's queue -- any thoughts on how to do this? > > Thanks, > > Miles Fidelman > > > ************************************************************************** > The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 > Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA > 02460-0006 > Director, Municipal Telecommunications > Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 > mfidelman@civicnet.org > http://civic.net/ccn.html > > Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century > Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere > Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" > ************************************************************************** > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 22:49:45 -0500 (EST) > From: John R Levine > Subject: Re: can anybody share experiences w/ EZMLM? > > > as far as I can tell, I can't configure both sendmail and qmail > to listen > > on port 25 - each listening for different things > > Right. > > > so.. it seems like what I'd have to do is have either sendmail > or qmail do > > the smtp listening, and hand off a range of addresses to the other > > program's queue -- any thoughts on how to do this? > > It's not hard. Assuming that you have sendmail listening on port 25, just > set up the alias file to call qmail-queue for the addresses that you want > qmail to handle. > > Regards, > John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet > for Dummies", > Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, > Sewer Commissioner > Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E > 9E A6 36 A3 47 > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 23:39:59 -0800 > From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" > Subject: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted > > Just a brief appeal to any of you out there who might be thinking of > setting up a mailing list with the help of EGROUPS.COM. Please don't. > > In fact if you are adverse to spam, you may just want to do what I > have just done here, and blacklist the entire egroups.com domain, > either at your router or in your mail server control files, so as > to avoid being placed on various EGROUPS.COM spam lists without your > consent. (See example below.) > > Seriously, this is SOOOOOOOOO lame. These people are pretending to > be professional list administrators, and not only are they spamming > but they apparently can't be bothered with little things like, oh, > CONFIRMING list subscriptions before they finalize them. > > Well, gotta run now. I'm off to www.egroups.com. I gotta sign up > to a few dozen of their stupid non-confirming > lists. Oh yea! And I musn't forget ! > > > Ron Guilmette > > > - ------- Forwarded Message > > Return-Path: lfp-retsub-947224300-457933015-rfg=monkeys.com@egroups.com > Received: from mu.egroups.com (mu.egroups.com [207.138.41.151]) > by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id VAA13092 > for ; Thu, 6 Jan 2000 21:51:42 -0800 (PST) > X-eGroups-Return: > lfp-retsub-947224300-457933015-rfg=monkeys.com@egroups.com > Received: from [10.1.1.11] by mu.egroups.com with NNFMP; 07 Jan > 2000 05:51:40 -0000 > Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 05:51:40 -0000 > From: "eGroups.com Manager" > To: rfg@monkeys.com > Subject: Welcome to the lfp group > Reply-To: lfp-unsubscribe-rfg=monkeys.com@egroups.com > Message-ID: <853utc+f7tc@eGroups.com> > User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 > Mailing-List: contact lfp-owner@egroups.com; run by eGroups.com > Precedence: list > X-Original-Recipient: RFC822;rfg@monkeys.com > > > Hello! > > info@lotsofreestuff.com has included you in the lfp group at > eGroups.com, a free email service. By joining this group, you can > share information, store photographs and files, coordinate events and > more! > > info@lotsofreestuff.com says: > WELCOME AND THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE > LEGALFORM.COM and LOTSOFREESTUFF.COM > NEWSLETTER GROUP. > We will not waste your time. > WE DO NOT SELL ANYTHING IN OUR NEWSLETTER, > SAME AS OUR WEBSITE -- IT'S ALL FREE! > We provide FREE information about FREE stuff that you can use > whether at home or at work, including merchandise, products, > reports, manuals, legal forms, software, services and much more - > all FREE! > If you sell a product or service, we'll help you in many ways in > marketing on the internet. > We want to become your number one source for helpful information > and FREE stuff. > Our service is always FREE and we NEVER give or sell our > subscriber list to anyone. > Thank you and Welcome! > Yancey Sexton, Webmaster > > > TO Unsubscribe: > Click Reply in your email program and then Send. > > eGroups.com asks group moderators to not add anyone to their group who > does not wish to join. If you believe this policy has been violated, > please notify us at abuse@egroups.com > > Welcome! > > eGroups.com - The easiest way for groups of people to communicate! > http://www.egroups.com > > > > > > > - ------- End of Forwarded Message > > ------------------------------ > > End of List-Managers-Digest V9 #3 > ********************************* > > To unsubscribe from List-Managers-Digest, send the following command > in the body of a message to "Majordomo@GreatCircle.COM": > > unsubscribe list-managers-digest > > If you want to subscribe or unsubscribe an address other than the > account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, > then append that address to the command; for example, to subscribe > "local-list-managers": > > subscribe list-managers-digest local-list-managers@your.domain.net > > A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to > subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "list-managers-digest" > in the commands above with "list-managers". > > Compressed back issues are available for anonymous FTP from > FTP.GreatCircle.COM, in pub/list-managers/digest/vNN.nMMM.Z (where "NN" > is the volume number, and "MMM" is the issue number). > From list-managers-owner Sun Jan 9 23:18:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA28813; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 23:12:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA28806 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 23:12:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA44646 ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 23:27:32 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001081842.AA03365@liv-26.outlawnet.com> References: <200001080900.BAA29109@honor.greatcircle.com> <200001081842.AA03365@liv-26.outlawnet.com> Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 23:18:42 -0800 To: garyb@fxt.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: List-Managers-Digest V9 #5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:42 AM -0800 1/8/2000, garyb@fxt.com wrote: >>> and violation of California law > > The dangerous thing that spammers are causing is the possible demand for > active government intervention. Good luck, unless it's the united nations. Since most of the spam that comes into my mailbox these days is routed through open relays in Brazil, Eastern Europe and various weird Asian nations, I'd love to see how the U.S. Government plans on enforcing whatever it is that plan on enacting..... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 10 02:08:46 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA01626; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 01:46:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from listes.cru.fr (listes.cru.fr [195.220.94.165]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA01618 for ; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 01:46:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from home.cru.fr (home.cru.fr [195.220.94.79]) by listes.cru.fr (8.9.2/jtpda-5.3.2) with ESMTP id KAA25605 for ; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 10:58:54 +0100 (MET) Received: from home.cru.fr (IDENT:salaun@localhost.cru.fr [127.0.0.1]) by home.cru.fr (8.9.3/jtpda-5.3.1) with ESMTP id KAA03764 for ; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 10:58:54 +0100 Message-Id: <200001100958.KAA03764@home.cru.fr> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.3 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: managing list archives... In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 07 Jan 2000 22:18:30 PST." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 10:58:54 +0100 From: Olivier Salaun - CRU Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach wrote : > The two groups I'm specifically trying to lock out are the e-mail > address harvesters who won't abide by a robots.txt restriction, We had the same problem with harvester going through the archives, in spite of the norobots.txt + some filtering based on user_agent in apache (I recommend a good article on this subject : http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/~brabec/antispam.html). Harvester are jumping from a page to another via anchors (following a but don't submit forms as far as we know. We have inserted a basic FORM at the entry of archives. The user needs to submit the form to access the archives. We have no direct link to our archives on our web server. This method has shown its efficiency over the last 2 years. Here is an exemple : http://listes.cru.fr/arc/http-mail-l@cru.fr/ > and the occasional troll that gets kicked off a list and goes looking > for ways to create havoc, where, by definition, a rule like "don't do > this" won't work. We have developped a web interface to Sympa MLM, which has an interresting way of managing archives : The authentication scheme is based on e-mail addresses and passwords. When subscribing to a list a user is allocated an initial password, he can change latter. He/she needs this password to access some private list functions. Once he/she privides his/her password, a HTTP cookie will do the auth job. Web archives are managed with MHonArc but they are not directly accessible through our web server (ie not in the web hierarchy). This job is performed by a CGI which has therefore complete control over who has access to an archive. Depending on "web_archive_access" list parameter (public|private|owner|listmaster|closed), the CGI awaits a password or requires specific privileged. Subscriber information are stored in a Relational Database, so the CGI and the MLM may work on the same set of data. Olivier Salaun Comite Reseaux des Universites http://www.cru.fr/ From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 10 14:51:38 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA10879; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:17:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from isrv3.isc.org (isrv3.isc.org [204.152.184.87]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA10872 for ; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:17:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from bb.rc.vix.com (bb.rc.vix.com [204.152.187.11]) by isrv3.isc.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) via ESMTP id OAA05191; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:29:44 -0800 (PST) env-from (Peter.Losher@nominum.com) Received: from localhost (plosher@localhost) by bb.rc.vix.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) via ESMTP id OAA27232; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:29:44 -0800 (PST) env-from (Peter.Losher@nominum.com) Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 14:29:44 -0800 (PST) From: Peter Losher To: Tom Neff cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: re: protecting list archives In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Sat, 8 Jan 2000, Tom Neff wrote: > You can even do this in message bodies if you want to try to > protect signatures. Just how? Don't forget the usual 'On , wrote:' as well, as .sig's. We had thought about munging/eliminating anything that had a '@' in it. but since a lot of code runs thru our lists, that was considered impratical. > I would also warn people joining the support list that their postings will > be archived for public view, and that they should watch what they post, or > use a spamproofed email account, or both. We already do that, and we support X-no-archive (although that defeats the purpose of an archive if everyone has X-no-archive in their messages)... -Peter --- Peter Losher Systems Admin. - Nominum, Inc. PGP Key available on request From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 10 23:16:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA15918; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:55:42 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id WAA15888 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:55:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from one.eListX.com (one.elistx.com [209.116.252.130]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id JAA21486 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 09:57:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from one.elistx.com by one.eListX.com id aa27200; 9 Jan 100 13:08 EST Reply-To: James M Galvin From: James M Galvin To: Bernie Cosell cc: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: use of "--" to intro sig (was: Silent != second-class :)) In-reply-to: Bernie Cosell's message of Sun, 09 Jan 2000 12:03:05 EST. <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----- =_aaaaaaaaaa0" Content-ID: <27196.947441313.0@one.elistx.com> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2000 13:08:33 -0500 Message-ID: <10001091308.aa27200@one.eListX.com> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <27196.947441313.1@one.elistx.com> I think that the usual convention requires that the '-- ' occur as a line all by itself. That is, the flag is "--". OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for introducing a signature... Must be something left over from the ancient days... [I guess that the 'modern' .sig is a MIME section with one of those blasted .vcf files...] I'm curious about the use of "--" if anyone has any ideas. I know it predates MIME although MIME certainly reinforces it. Majordomo, one of the older but not the oldest list management application has always used it as a mark to signify "stop processing", but I know it predates it also. As far as VCF files go, I can tolerate those. At least I can do things with that data. The ones I consider garbage are "ms-tnef". Guess who propogated that trash?! Jim ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <27196.947441313.2@one.elistx.com> Content-Description: Contact Information -- James M. Galvin, Ph.D. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Return-Path: <@mail.acm.org:list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com> Received: from mail.acm.org by one.eListX.com id aa26749; 9 Jan 100 12:38 EST Received: from honor.greatcircle.com (honor.greatcircle.com [198.102.244.44]) by mail.acm.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA13562; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 12:35:32 -0500 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id IAA20930; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 08:50:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.rev.net (mail.rev.net [206.67.68.8]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id IAA20923 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 08:50:44 -0800 (PST) Received: from default (USER28.GVA.NET [216.80.135.32]) by mail.rev.net (8.10.0.Beta10/8.10.0.Beta10) with ESMTP id e09H0Y122009 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 12:00:34 -0500 Message-Id: <200001091700.e09H0Y122009@mail.rev.net> From: Bernie Cosell Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers To: List-Managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 12:03:05 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Silent != second-class :) In-reply-to: <3.0.6.32.20000109091505.007a3ae0@pop.mv.net> References: <200001090900.BAA14956@honor.greatcircle.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@greatcircle.com Precedence: bulk On 9 Jan 00, at 9:15, Lou McIntosh wrote: > Elsewhere, Bernie Cosell writes: > >But as for signatures, would just filtering off after "--" be > >sufficient, or is that not widely-enough accepted as a "my .sig begins > >here" convention.. > If you do that, you are assured of missing almost all of my > very-occasional posts, because I use space-doubledash-space in the middle > of my message text to signify a pause or a gasp or a parenthetical phrase > or a lapse of memory -- um, where was I? I think that the usual convention requires that the '-- ' occur as a line all by itself. That is, the flag is "--". OTOH, I can't remember where I _saw_ that as a 'standard' for introducing a signature... Must be something left over from the ancient days... [I guess that the 'modern' .sig is a MIME section with one of those blasted .vcf files...] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- ------- =_aaaaaaaaaa0-- From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 10 23:31:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id WAA15919; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:55:45 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id WAA15908 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:55:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id MAA23145 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 12:55:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mercury.mcs.net (dattier@Mercury.mcs.net [192.160.127.80]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA66684 for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 15:08:16 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@Mercury.mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mercury.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id PAA95747 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Sun, 9 Jan 2000 15:08:16 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <200001092108.PAA95747@Mercury.mcs.net> Subject: Re: subscribing those who cannot send email In-Reply-To: from Chuq Von Rospach at "Jan 8, 2000 10:56:35 pm" To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 15:08:15 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Chuq Von Rospach responded, | First, you misrepresent my position. There's a huge difference | between "won't write email" and "can't master the jargon needed to | subscribe to a mailing list". Of course there is, and I have been writing consistently from the first about people who can't send email at all. The matter of jargon was not mentioned in my first post, your first post, nor my second post; you brought it up in your second post, in the passage quoted just above. I don't consider the words "reply" and "respond" to be jargon. Chuq, really, we're not that far apart. You misunderstand me, that's all. The subject under discussion was whether a list should support a direct-add feature that does not require any action at all from the person being sub- scribed. The argument given against it was that it facilitates spamming, while the argument given in favor was that it lets a listowner subscribe people who are too helpless with email to reply to a confirmation request. Then I said that someone that helpless with email won't be an asset to the list; later I modified it to say that if the list carries ads, then the person's eyes might be an asset to the listowner even if his/her thoughts never get to benefit the other members. And while I felt it implicit even in my first post, in my second post I specified that the list can still be an asset to such a person. You seem to have the notion that I was saying that people who cannot issue the commands to join a mailing list on their own cannot contribute to it. No, I did not. The people in question -- and it seems I'll have to remind you of this several times -- are those who, when the list manager issues an add command that requires the subscriber to confirm, cannot confirm, and will get onto the list only if they are added in such a way that doesn't require any action from them at all. But there's more. Many subscription confirmation systems want to be sure that they're not hearing from an autoresponder, and they require the re- spondent to alter the subject or the body of the reply in some small way for it be a valid confirmation. But the host about which Ron complained was eGroups. The host under discus- sion where I've seen listowners up in arms about the suggested removal of direct-add has been Onelist. On those two systems (which now belong to one corporation but still operate separately), when a list manager uses add-with- confirm, all the potential subscriber has to do to confirm is just send any message, such as the default text of a reply or even a null body, to the Reply-To: address. The only email skill the person needs is to choose Reply and then Send in the MUA. There is no need to edit the reply (which could be the incoming text quoted or cited in any form, or could be empty: it doesn't matter, so no editing skill is needed), nor to make sure that the subject meets any specific requirements. All the person has to do is get any message to the reply address. (And yes, there have been incidents when people who don't want to join send back, "What the hell is this about?" and find them- selves subscribed and receiving the list's mailings.) So yes, I was talking about people who absolutely cannot send email. Not people who can't subscribe themselves; not people who can't carry out con- firmation instructions that involve changing the body or the subject or the return address; but people who cannot select the Reply and Send commands in their MUAs. The first two groups might post; the third will not until they learn or dare to use their MUAs to send as well as read (if they even read their email -- if a person doesn't even read email, then there truly is no reason to put such a person onto a mailing list). If all you have to do is choose Reply and then Send in your MUA, mastering mailing list jargon is not the issue. | And second, lists are always supported by a few people, and the | majority (usually a huge majority) of users never contribute. Do you | encourage kicking off members who don't post to the list, too? Talk about misrepresenting the other party's position! (Some lists do have posting requirements; those I've run have not, ever.) All my lists have had loads of lurkers, but they all had written to join, and if they hadn't they wouldn't be on; what's key is that they opted in. Except perhaps when where I took over a list that someone else had started and I didn't ask how the members already on it got there, I've never added anyone who didn't send email expressing interest. When members ask me to add some- one else, I write back that the person has to ask for him/herself. (Then I write to the person, saying that so-and-so said [s]he'd be interested in our list, and that if [s]he wants to join [s]he can reply to let me know. Very rarely has there been a response.) Once I met someone on a chat service who expressed an interest in the topic of my current list and I invited him to join, but I still asked him to email me first (OK, not so much to prove that he could send email as to give him some time to think about it and not pres- sure him to decide right there). When listowners say they need the direct-add feature because they have to put people on who can't write email, one must conclude that these subscribers didn't email the listowners to ask for help with subscribing. It is one thing to allow someone onto a list who asked to join but won't post; it is quite another to plop someone onto a list who didn't ask and who won't post. Your extrapolation to lurkers who joined voluntarily just doesn't work. So why do these listowners want to subscribe people who cannot send email and thus not only won't post but also didn't write to try to join? Are they truly opting in if they've never expressed an interest in the list? Maybe it's a corporate announcement list that all employees must read. Maybe they asked to join by some communication means other than email. Those are a couple of the possibilities I was covering when I said in my second post that sometimes the list that is an asset to the subscriber even if the subscriber is not an asset to the list. | And third, there are more to mailing lists than discussion lists. Of course. Again, sometimes the list is an asset to the member even if the member isn't an asset to the list. However, most of the listowners whom I've seen say that they need the direct-add feature run discussion lists, so there was a reason that my posts have leaned toward the case of discussion lists. From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 00:20:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA06378; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 23:11:39 -0800 (PST) Received: (mcb@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) id XAA06370 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 23:11:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from Kitten.mcs.net (Kitten.mcs.com [192.160.127.90]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id NAA10134 for ; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 13:07:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from Mars.mcs.net (dattier@Mars.mcs.net [192.160.127.85]) by Kitten.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA57603 for ; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 15:20:36 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from dattier@Mars.mcs.net) Received: (from dattier@localhost) by Mars.mcs.net (8.9.3/8.8.2) id PAA17336 for List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM; Mon, 10 Jan 2000 15:20:36 -0600 (CST) From: "David W. Tamkin" Message-Id: <200001102120.PAA17336@Mars.mcs.net> Subject: Re: EGROUPS.COM Blacklisted In-Reply-To: <20000107202901.O25531@ma-1.rootsweb.com> from Tim Pierce at "Jan 7, 2000 08:29:01 pm" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 15:20:36 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Tim wrote, | ... I am not aware of any mailing list package which requires | confirmation from the subscriber even when the list manager initiated the | subscribe request. On ONElist and on eGroups (and I'd be surprised if the situation is different on other major web-based listhosts), a listowner has two add commands: one sends people confirmation requests to which they must respond in order to be subscribed, and one forcibly adds them but tells them how to unsub. Part of the irony in the system is the reply addresses. Any message to the confirmation request's reply address will confirm you, so people who write back "Hell no! I want no part of this!" get fully subscribed; but the reply address of the notice that you've been direct-added is the -unsubscribe address [I think a preconfirmed version on eGroups], so people who write back, "Thanks for adding me. I look forward to enjoying the list," get taken off. On Coollist there have been incidents of listowners who forcibly subscribe people and then, if they unsub themselves, forcibly resubscribe them, and unlike eGroups and ONElist, Coollist management has been totally unrespon- sive about the problem. From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 17:24:31 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA19626; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 17:00:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from smoe.org (jane.smoe.org [24.30.216.55]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA19619 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 17:00:24 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jeffw@localhost) by smoe.org (8.8.7/8.8.7/daemon-mode-jane) id UAA10116; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:13:32 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:13:32 -0500 From: Jeff Wasilko To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Mail-Followup-To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk We use bulk_mailer to pre-sort our list mail by domain, and it appears that Apple thinks bulk_mailer is a spammer's tool and they're now blocking mail that has bulk_mailer in the Received lines: The original message was received at Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:59:55 -0500 (EST) from jane.smoe.org [24.30.216.55] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to mail-in.apple.com.: >>> DATA <<< 550 Banned Received: text was found: 'bulk_mailer' 554 ... Service unavailable Anyone else seeing this? -jeff From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 18:54:26 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id SAA20400; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 18:34:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id SAA20393 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 18:34:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA29310 ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 18:50:09 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> References: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 18:47:22 -0800 To: Jeff Wasilko From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Apple installed a new anti-spam tool that has that as part of it's default settings. It'll be turned off shortly at Apple. I do suggest that users who use bulk-mailer recompile it so that is identifies itself with some other string (I do it in pig latin), simply because people do restrict on that string, and now it looks like a commercial product is doing so in its published defaults. Apple will be fixed shortly, though. I've already talked to the postmaster about it. At 8:13 PM -0500 1/12/2000, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > We use bulk_mailer to pre-sort our list mail by domain, and it > appears that Apple thinks bulk_mailer is a spammer's tool and > they're now blocking mail that has bulk_mailer in the Received > lines: -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 19:25:08 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA20688; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:03:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from smoe.org (jane.smoe.org [24.30.216.55]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA20681 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:03:49 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jeffw@localhost) by smoe.org (8.8.7/8.8.7/daemon-mode-jane) id WAA13029; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 22:16:57 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <20000112221656.B8376@smoe.org> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 22:16:56 -0500 From: Jeff Wasilko To: Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Mail-Followup-To: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com References: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1 In-Reply-To: ; from "Chuq Von Rospach" on Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 06:47:22PM -0800 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 06:47:22PM -0800, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > > Apple installed a new anti-spam tool that has that as part of it's > default settings. It'll be turned off shortly at Apple. I do suggest > that users who use bulk-mailer recompile it so that is identifies > itself with some other string (I do it in pig latin), simply because > people do restrict on that string, and now it looks like a commercial > product is doing so in its published defaults. I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: line that bulk_mailer adds. Given that he's now releasing it under the GNU General Public License, I doubt he'd succeed now. -jeff From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 20:09:09 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA21033; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:47:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from geek.net (geek.net [216.91.168.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA21013 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 19:47:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rhayden@localhost) by geek.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA24599; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 22:00:22 -0600 Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 22:00:22 -0600 (CST) From: "Robert A. Hayden" To: Jeff Wasilko cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer In-Reply-To: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > We use bulk_mailer to pre-sort our list mail by domain, and it > appears that Apple thinks bulk_mailer is a spammer's tool and > they're now blocking mail that has bulk_mailer in the Received > lines: Simply recompile bilk_mailer with some other arbitrary string that doesn't offend apple's gestapo. Works for my lists. =-=-=-=-=-= Robert Hayden rhayden@geek.net UIN: 16570192 From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 21:09:25 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA21509; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:53:47 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA21501 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:53:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA21534 ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 21:09:13 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000112221656.B8376@smoe.org> References: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> <20000112221656.B8376@smoe.org> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:53:21 -0800 To: Jeff Wasilko , Chuq Von Rospach From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 10:16 PM -0500 1/12/2000, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a > while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: > line that bulk_mailer adds. Then he ought to be off talking to the anti-spam folks that are blocking it for us... That'd be a great way to convince us all to stop using it, no? > I doubt he'd succeed now. or then.... -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 21:39:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA21718; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 21:16:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (i180.value.net [206.14.136.180]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA21711 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 21:15:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from monkeys.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by monkeys.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA47532; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 21:28:50 -0800 (PST) To: Jeff Wasilko cc: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 12 Jan 2000 20:13:32 -0500. <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2000 21:28:50 -0800 Message-ID: <47530.947741330@monkeys.com> From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In message <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org>, Jeff Wasilko wrote: >We use bulk_mailer to pre-sort our list mail by domain, and it >appears that Apple thinks bulk_mailer is a spammer's tool and >they're now blocking mail that has bulk_mailer in the Received >lines: > >The original message was received at Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:59:55 -0500 (EST) >from jane.smoe.org [24.30.216.55] > > ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- > > > ----- Transcript of session follows ----- >.. while talking to mail-in.apple.com.: >>>> DATA ><<< 550 Banned Received: text was found: 'bulk_mailer' >554 ... Service unavailable > >Anyone else seeing this? No, but frankly, I'm not surprised. That one almost went on my blacklists too. That "bulk_mailer" thing _is_ clearly used by some people for 100% legit opt-in lists, but quite a few spammers have used that mailing list software also. -- rfg P.S. Is the E-mail address taken? If not, can I have it? :-) From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 23:25:07 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA22552; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:00:14 -0800 (PST) Received: from ivan.iecc.com (ivan.iecc.com [208.31.42.33]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id XAA22487 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:00:00 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 19689 invoked by uid 100); 13 Jan 2000 02:13:11 -0500 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 02:13:11 -0500 (EST) From: John R Levine To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk >> I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a >> while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: >> line that bulk_mailer adds. Seems to me that it'd be easier all around to switch to an MTA like postfix or qmail that runs fast without needing gross hacks like b*lk*m**l*r. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 12 23:54:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA22817; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:39:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from blipvert.blank.org ([216.112.239.86]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id XAA22810 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:39:19 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 21254 invoked by uid 500); 13 Jan 2000 07:52:30 -0000 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 02:52:30 -0500 From: "Nathan J. Mehl" To: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Message-ID: <20000113025230.K13648@blank.org> References: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> <20000112221656.B8376@smoe.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <20000112221656.B8376@smoe.org>; from jeffw@smoe.org on Wed, Jan 12, 2000 at 10:16:56PM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk In the immortal words of Jeff Wasilko (jeffw@smoe.org): > > I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a > while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: > line that bulk_mailer adds. Wow. How...unique. Guess I won't be recommending b_m to any of my consulting clients any more. -n ------------------------------------------------------------ "When the people who are doing the work are 12 time zones away from the people who understand what the code does, you get problems." (--H.B. Messenger) ------------------------------------------------ From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 00:09:25 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA22773; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:30:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from geek.net (geek.net [216.91.168.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA22766 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:30:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (rhayden@localhost) by geek.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id BAA28212; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 01:43:40 -0600 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 01:43:40 -0600 (CST) From: "Robert A. Hayden" To: Chuq Von Rospach cc: Jeff Wasilko , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > At 10:16 PM -0500 1/12/2000, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > > > I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a > > while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: > > line that bulk_mailer adds. > > Then he ought to be off talking to the anti-spam folks that are > blocking it for us... That'd be a great way to convince us all to > stop using it, no? This from the bulk_mailer README... -- License to copy and use this program is granted according to the terms of the current version of the GNU General Public License. However, there is one exception: this program may not be used to send unsolicited commercial messages. There's no warranty on this, but you're welcome to use it if you want. -- Welp...guess what....the GNU Public License allows us to change that line since it's open source. =-=-=-=-=-= Robert Hayden rhayden@geek.net UIN: 16570192 From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 00:24:35 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id XAA22924; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:54:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id XAA22917 for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2000 23:54:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA117928 ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 00:09:35 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20000113025230.K13648@blank.org> References: <20000112201332.A8376@smoe.org> <20000112221656.B8376@smoe.org> <20000113025230.K13648@blank.org> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 00:06:44 -0800 To: "Nathan J. Mehl" , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@greatcircle.com From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 2:52 AM -0500 1/13/2000, Nathan J. Mehl wrote: > Wow. How...unique. Guess I won't be recommending b_m to any of my > consulting clients any more. I wouldn't, anyway. John's right, and I'd look into a setup that doesn't require it. I'm going to be looking at using postfix down the road, and removing b_m for a custom module that does full verping. Or go to a more modern MLM. Basically, only majordomo needs it. And majordomo's long in the tooth. Newer MLM's, whether it's listar, sympa, or whatever, do this for you, so b_m is fixing a problem in older systems that new systems take care of better. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 02:27:01 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id CAA25742; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 02:01:24 -0800 (PST) Received: from euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk (euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk [138.250.48.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id CAA25730 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 02:00:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk ([138.250.24.137] ident=cc047) by euler.central.cranfield.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 2.12 #1) id 128hGH-0004hj-00; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:13:49 +0000 Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 10:13:46 +0000 (GMT) From: Jeffrey Goldberg X-Sender: cc047@neumann.ccc.cranfield.ac.uk Reply-To: Jeffrey Goldberg To: John R Levine cc: Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Organization: Cranfield University Computer Centre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, John R Levine wrote: > >> I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a > >> while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: > >> line that bulk_mailer adds. > > Seems to me that it'd be easier all around to switch to an MTA like postfix > or qmail that runs fast without needing gross hacks like b*lk*m**l*r. Or exim. Any of these MTAs entirely obviate the need for bulk_mailer, and are far more reliable. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg +44 (0)1234 750 111 x 2826 Cranfield Computer Centre FAX 751 814 J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk http://WWW.Cranfield.ac.uk/public/cc/cc047/ Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice. From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 03:40:50 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id DAA27804; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:14:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from golf.dax.net (golf.dax.net [193.216.69.103]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id DAA27796 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:14:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from ann ([193.216.172.39]) by golf.dax.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA15257 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 12:28:46 +0100 (MET) Message-Id: <200001131128.MAA15257@golf.dax.net> From: "Annie" To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 12:34:28 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Mailing list promotion Reply-to: nacelebs@online.no X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hi guys, I'm fascinated with the topics on this list, but also feel like I need a list for mailing list promotion. Do you guys know of any such list? I tried subscribing to one, but it looked like it wasn't working - no response. I'll continue reading this list, but like I said - I really need more on mailing list promotion. Guess those with a really good memory will see why ;-) Regards Annie From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 14:59:59 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id OAA04134; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 14:39:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from smoe.org (jane.smoe.org [24.30.216.55]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id OAA04127 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 14:39:29 -0800 (PST) Received: (from jeffw@localhost) by smoe.org (8.8.7/8.8.7/daemon-mode-jane) id RAA16309; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:52:34 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <20000113175234.C8376@smoe.org> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:52:34 -0500 From: Jeff Wasilko To: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach Cc: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer Mail-Followup-To: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.91.1 In-Reply-To: ; from "John R Levine" on Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 02:13:11AM -0500 Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 02:13:11AM -0500, John R Levine wrote: > >> I spoke to the author of bulk_mailer about this type of problem a > >> while ago, and he threatened to sue me if I altered the Received: > >> line that bulk_mailer adds. > > Seems to me that it'd be easier all around to switch to an MTA like postfix > or qmail that runs fast without needing gross hacks like b*lk*m**l*r. John: We really don't want to get sucked into MTA battles now, do we? I suspect postfix could benefit greatly from bulk_mailer's domain sorting, and I'd rather not talk about the network abuse that qmail does... -jeff From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 17:14:34 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id QAA06895; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 16:55:34 -0800 (PST) Received: from ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (ikkoku.maison-otaku.net [207.195.149.217]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id QAA06886 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 16:55:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from godai.maison-otaku.net (godai.maison-otaku.net [216.122.4.241]) by ikkoku.maison-otaku.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81FB6AF8AC; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:18:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (loki@localhost) by godai.maison-otaku.net (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id RAA22249; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:04:27 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: godai.maison-otaku.net: loki owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:04:26 -0800 (PST) From: Jeremy Blackman To: Jeff Wasilko Cc: John R Levine , Chuq Von Rospach , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: Apple blocking listmail sent via bulk_mailer In-Reply-To: <20000113175234.C8376@smoe.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Jeff Wasilko wrote: > We really don't want to get sucked into MTA battles now, do we? Please, no. Thank you. > I suspect postfix could benefit greatly from bulk_mailer's domain > sorting, and I'd rather not talk about the network abuse that > qmail does... However, I will note that, last time I checked, Postfix did the domain-sorting stuff internally. One reason that Listar's sort-tolist function can be turned off; there's really no point to it on some MTAs. Now, Sendmail with smtpfeed can compare pretty favorably to the others, except in memory usage. (Smtpfeed is a RAM /hog/.) -- Jeremy Blackman - loki@maison-otaku.net / loki@listar.org / jeremy@lith.com Lithtech Team, Monolith Productions -- http://www.lith.com Listar Developer -- http://www.listar.org From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 18:13:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id RAA07379; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:55:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from front2.grolier.fr (front2.grolier.fr [194.158.96.52]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id RAA07370 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 17:55:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from 194.158.126.50 (Reims-4-50.club-internet.fr [194.158.126.50]) by front2.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with ESMTP id DAA26802 for ; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 03:08:24 +0100 (MET) Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 03:08:19 +0100 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.38e) S/N C3810D62 / Personal Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <16130.000114@monbebe.net> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Bouncing loops Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello List users, I'm new on List servers and I would like to know how we can setup, as we have one time, an antiloop manager. I explain: someone has sent a message from say request@somewhere to our manager@here. Manager replies to request, and attach the request message to the end of the mail body. Request received it, and replied to manager, and so, and so, and so. With chance, both have length limitation and the message didn't grew up to much, but it bounce during all a nite long... So my questions are in fact, how List servers handle and manage this, with what technics etc? I never want such a thing in my life. What is the best software that fight this. How they can fight this, I would be sure to not have it again. Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 13 21:03:23 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id UAA08999; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 20:45:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp.america.net (smtp.america.net [199.170.121.14]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id UAA08990 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 20:45:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from inspiron7000 (max1-2.shoreham.net [208.144.253.4]) by smtp.america.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id XAA28975 for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 23:58:20 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <4.1.20000113234701.009c9630@mail.iecc.com> X-Sender: margy@mail.iecc.com (Unverified) X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 00:01:25 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Margaret Levine Young Subject: Mailing List Gurus site Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk OK, we're not really mailing list gurus, but we have the gurus.com domain, so what else are we going to call a site about mailing lists? I've just pulled together a bunch of information about mailing lists, for both subscribers and list managers, into a site at http://lists.gurus.com -- please let me know if you find it useful. There are still a lot of topics missing (archives and moderation, for example), but it's a start. Margy Levine Young Coauthor of "The Internet For Dummies," 6th Ed. and "Internet: The Complete Reference" . Looking for kids' videos? Check out From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 14 01:43:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA12555; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 01:28:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from newmail.spectraweb.ch (newmail.spectraweb.ch [194.158.230.44]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA12548 for ; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 01:28:16 -0800 (PST) From: nb@thinkcoach.com Received: from quill.thinkcoach.com (194.230.192.46) by newmail.spectraweb.ch; 14 Jan 2000 10:41:28 +0100 Received: (from norbert@localhost) by quill.thinkcoach.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA00678; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 09:33:44 +0100 Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 09:33:44 +0100 Message-Id: <200001140833.JAA00678@quill.thinkcoach.com> X-Authentication-Warning: quill.thinkcoach.com: norbert set sender to Norbert Bollow using -f Prefer-Language: de, en, fr To: admin@monbebe.net CC: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM In-reply-to: <16130.000114@monbebe.net> (message from Monbebe Admin on Fri, 14 Jan 2000 03:08:19 +0100) Subject: Re: Bouncing loops References: <16130.000114@monbebe.net> Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk > Manager replies to request, and attach the request message to the end of > the mail body. Request received it, and replied to manager, and so, and so, > and so. With chance, both have length limitation and the message didn't grew > up to much, but it bounce during all a nite long... > > So my questions are in fact, how List servers handle and > manage this, with what technics etc? I never want such a thing in my life. > > What is the best software that fight this. How they can fight > this, I would be sure to not have it again. I'm writing all my email robots in Perl, and they all use a module which implements the following limit() function. The idea is that a limit is imposed all action, so that whenever what looks like essentially the same action happens over and over again, eventually the email robot will just ignore similar messages silently for the rest of the day. So for example, the first five subscription requests for the same list and the same email address will be processed normally. After that, the next five requests will not be processed, but will be returned to the sender with an explanation that a certain limit has been exceeded. The eleventh subscription requests for the same list and the same email address will be forwarded to the site administrator to alert him that there is a problem. Any further subscription requests for the same list and the same email address will be silently ignored. I make use of all this functionality with a single line like limit(%msg,5,5,"subscrition_request_limit",$list,$addr); so that my laziness won't stop me from implementing this limit for every action that the email robot can possibly take. Warm greetings, Norbert. # limit() - Limits the number of times that essentially the same action # will be performed on any single day, to prevent all kinds of # disastrous mail loops. # arguments: the message that triggered this action # number of times the action may be performed # number of times this function will generate an error response # filename for the notification message to use when the limit # is exceeded # additional data for uniquely determining what is "essentially # the same action"; these are also available as replacement # arguments in the notification message. # returns: nothing # example: limit(%msg,5,5,"subscrition_request_limit",$list,$addr); sub limit(\%$$@) { my %msg=%{shift @_}; my $limit=shift; my $errlimit=shift; my $id=join(":",@_); my $txtfile=shift; db_midnightsweep("limit.db"); my $c=db_get("limit.db",$id); $c ||= 0; $c++; db_put("limit.db",$id,$c); if ($c>$limit+$errlimit+5) { wlog("Limit exceeded, response and alert suppressed: $id"); exit; } elsif ($c==$limit+$errlimit+5) { wlog("Limit exceeded, response suppressed, last alert: $id"); mforward("limit ($limit) exceeded for $id\n\nThis is the last time for today that you will be alerted\nconcerning this limit; all further alerts will be suppressed.",$msg{'text'}); exit; } elsif ($c>$limit+$errlimit) { wlog("Limit exceeded, response suppressed, alerting: $id"); mforward("limit ($limit) exceeded for $id",$msg{'text'}); exit; } elsif ($c>$limit) { wlog("Limit exceeded, responding: $id"); respond(%msg, $errto, $txtfile, @_); exit; } } May blessings from the eternal God surprise and overtake you! Norbert. -- Norbert Bollow, Weidlistr.18, CH-8624 Gruet (near Zurich, Switzerland) Tel +41 1 972 20 59 Fax +41 1 972 20 69 http://thinkcoach.com From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 14 08:02:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA17895; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 07:40:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from ntascsg5.intranet.hdr (exchhost.hdrinc.com [206.61.158.100]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA17883 for ; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 07:39:57 -0800 (PST) Received: by ntascsg5.intranet.hdr with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0) id ; Fri, 14 Jan 2000 09:53:20 -0600 Message-ID: <81237BCF173ED311951000A0C9E4FEE4AF8806@ntascsg28.intranet.hdr> From: "Tegels, Kent" To: "'Margaret Levine Young'" , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: RE: Mailing List Gurus site Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 08:04:48 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Margy and All, This site is helpful and I appreciate that somebody steped up to the challenge. I've recently been tasked with a project that I think would make good conversation for the members of this list: A corporate-wide policy on the use of Lyris in Intranet, Internet and Extranet Applications. We have one model for how Lyris gets used in internally but I'm not all that happy with the results. I was wondering if anybody else had insights they care to share with us about their organizations manage list server rights? Thanks! Kent Tegels Team Leader, Network Applications HDR, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: Margaret Levine Young [mailto:margy@gurus.com] Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2000 11:01 PM To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Mailing List Gurus site OK, we're not really mailing list gurus, but we have the gurus.com domain, so what else are we going to call a site about mailing lists? I've just pulled together a bunch of information about mailing lists, for both subscribers and list managers, into a site at http://lists.gurus.com -- please let me know if you find it useful. There are still a lot of topics missing (archives and moderation, for example), but it's a start. Margy Levine Young Coauthor of "The Internet For Dummies," 6th Ed. and "Internet: The Complete Reference" . Looking for kids' videos? Check out From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 17 07:37:56 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id HAA02143; Mon, 17 Jan 2000 07:35:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from front4m.grolier.fr (front4m.grolier.fr [195.36.216.54]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id HAA02126 for ; Mon, 17 Jan 2000 07:34:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from 195.36.203.234 (Troyes-5-234.club-internet.fr [195.36.203.234]) by front4m.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with ESMTP id QAA22182 for ; Mon, 17 Jan 2000 16:45:22 +0100 (MET) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 16:46:32 +0100 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.38e) S/N C3810D62 / Personal Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <0698.000117@monbebe.net> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Spam expressions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello List-Managers, Thx you for your recent post concerning loop trackings. In the same way, is there a maintained file/list of spam expressions, in texte format under regexp or not ? I mean "Win money", "$$$$$$$", "Adult sex" etc etc..... ?? Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 17 19:38:00 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA09283; Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:25:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from shell7.ba.best.com (shell7.ba.best.com [206.184.139.138]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA09276 for ; Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:25:50 -0800 (PST) Received: (from cnorman@localhost) by shell7.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) id TAA18575; Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:37:31 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:37:31 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200001180337.TAA18575@shell7.ba.best.com> From: Cyndi Norman To: admin@monbebe.net CC: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM, cnorman@best.com In-reply-to: <0698.000117@monbebe.net> (message from Monbebe Admin on Mon, 17 Jan 2000 16:46:32 +0100) Subject: Re: Spam expressions Reply-to: cnorman@best.com Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 16:46:32 +0100 From: Monbebe Admin In the same way, is there a maintained file/list of spam expressions, in texte format under regexp or not ? I mean "Win money", "$$$$$$$", "Adult sex" etc etc..... ?? Yes. Go to http://www.hrweb.org/spambouncer/ Catherine Hampton has put together a great (and free) spam catching program you run from procmail. If you don't want the full program you can just download the code to see her lists of expressions. She updates them regularly and has a mailing list to tell you when updates are ready and what's in them (no discussion, just announcements). Cyndi -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "There's nothing wrong with me. Maybe there's Cyndi Norman something wrong with the universe." (ST:TNG) cyndi@consultclarity.com http://www.tikvah.com/ _________________ Owner of the Immune Website & Lists http://www.immuneweb.org/ From list-managers-owner Wed Jan 26 11:09:55 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id KAA09693; Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:58:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.visi.com (baal.visi.com [209.98.98.3]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id KAA09686 for ; Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:58:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from infinia (clift.dsl.visi.com [209.98.142.42]) by mail.visi.com (8.8.8/8.7.5) with SMTP id NAA13399; Wed, 26 Jan 2000 13:11:14 -0600 (CST) Posted-Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 13:11:14 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <200001261911.NAA13399@mail.visi.com> From: "Steven Clift" Organization: http://www.e-democracy.org/do To: TownTalk@dynapolis.com, e-conf@chatsubo.com, GNA-VC@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU, onlinefacilitation@egroups.com Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 13:10:21 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Open Groups - Descriptive Standards Proposal Reply-to: slc@publicus.net CC: votalk@virtual-organization.net, list-moderators@list-moderators.com, List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.11) Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Online forum managers of the world unite! And lose the chains of obscurity. :-) OPEN GROUPS - http://www.opengroups.org Directory information for online interaction Open Groups will help people to search, locate, evaluate, and join ongoing interactive public groups across the Internet through the development of open standards to describe online groups. Join the Announcement list for this proposed initiative. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: open-groups-announce-subscribe@egroups.com Or visit the web site for more information: http://www.opengroups.org ... Please visit the web site above for a full description of the concept and let us know if you would like to be directly involved in the volunteer team working to develop this proposal. Steven Clift opengroups@publicus.net Open Groups http://www.opengroups.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Steven Clift - E: clift@publicus.net T:+1.612.822.8667 Info - http://publicus.net DO - http://e-democracy.org/do Web White & Blue - http://webwhiteblue.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 27 01:40:10 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id BAA20166; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 01:23:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from front6.grolier.fr (front6.grolier.fr [194.158.96.56]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id BAA20159 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 01:23:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from 195.36.195.47 (Compiegne-2-47.club-internet.fr [195.36.195.47]) by front6.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with ESMTP id KAA25298 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:36:39 +0100 (MET) Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 10:36:40 +0100 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.39) Personal Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <17442.000127@monbebe.net> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: List server performance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello List-Managers, Is there (a) comparative table between different list servers, in term of posting performances ? I mean something like for example: Machine | Software | Line | Msg Kb | # messages | Average --------------------------------------------------------- PIII500 Linux | Majordomo | T1 | 5 | 2000 | 10 mails/second P133 NT | Dolist | 512 | 6 | 400 | 21 mails/second etc ?? Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 27 06:39:24 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id GAA24962; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 06:26:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from sws5.ctd.ornl.gov (sws5.ctd.ornl.gov [128.219.128.125]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with SMTP id GAA24955 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 06:26:47 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 567076 invoked by uid 3995); 27 Jan 2000 14:40:15 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14480.22735.846663.710330@sws5.ctd.ornl.gov> Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 09:40:15 -0500 (EST) From: Dave Sill To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: List server performance In-Reply-To: <17442.000127@monbebe.net> References: <17442.000127@monbebe.net> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 "20 Minutes to Nikko" XEmacs Lucid (patch 2) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab, Oak Ridge, Tenn., USA X-Face: "p~Q]mg{;e*}YR|)&Q/&Q\*~5UWfZX34;5M wrote: >Is there (a) comparative table between different list servers, >in term of posting performances ? >I mean something like for example: > >Machine | Software | Line | Msg Kb | # messages | Average >--------------------------------------------------------- >PIII500 Linux | Majordomo | T1 | 5 | 2000 | 10 mails/second >P133 NT | Dolist | 512 | 6 | 400 | 21 mails/second Such comparisons are only meaningful if they're processing the same workload from the same location, and there's other critical information you'd need like which MTA was in use (if the list manager doesn't handle delivery itself), background load on the server (there shouldn't be any), OS version, installed RAM, IDE vs. SCSI disks, which name server cache was used, of any, etc. Also, average delivery rate isn't too useful for measuring delivery performance because a handful of slow recipient hosts really skews the result. You really need to look at the delivery curve, or at least the rate at which the first, say, 90% of deliveries occur. My less-than-meaningful contribution is: system: AlphaServer 2100 CPU: 2 x 200 MHz RAM: 320 MB OS: Tru64 UNIX 4.0D MTA: qmail 1.03 MLM: Majordomo 1.94.4 LAN: 100baseT WAN: OC3? name server: dnscache 0.70 background load: INN news server, anonymous FTP disks: 7200 rpm scsi message size: 3 KB recipients: 1846 (tru64-unix-managers@ornl.gov list) average delivery rate: 7.9 per second peak delivery rate: 122 per second (45 msgs in a .37 s interval) 90% delivery rate: 21.3 per second -Dave From list-managers-owner Thu Jan 27 21:55:16 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA03461; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 21:38:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from front7.grolier.fr (front7.grolier.fr [194.158.96.57]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA03454 for ; Thu, 27 Jan 2000 21:38:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from 195.36.194.102 (Compiegne-3-102.club-internet.fr [195.36.194.102]) by front7.grolier.fr (8.9.3/No_Relay+No_Spam_MGC990224) with ESMTP id GAA14296 for ; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 06:51:27 +0100 (MET) Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 06:51:26 +0100 From: Monbebe Admin X-Mailer: The Bat! (v1.39) Personal Reply-To: Monbebe Admin Organization: http://www.monbebe.net X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <3285.000128@monbebe.net> To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM Subject: Re: List server performance X-Sender: Monbebe Admin Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Hello Dave, Thursday, January 27, 2000, 3:40:15 PM, you wrote: > Such comparisons are only meaningful if they're processing the same > workload from the same location, and there's other critical > information you'd need like which MTA was in use (if the list manager > doesn't handle delivery itself), background load on the server (there > shouldn't be any), OS version, installed RAM, IDE vs. SCSI disks, > which name server cache was used, of any, etc. I'm totally agree with you, sorry not be to be as much detailled as necessary. > Also, average delivery rate isn't too useful for measuring delivery > performance because a handful of slow recipient hosts really skews the > result. You really need to look at the delivery curve, or at least the > rate at which the first, say, 90% of deliveries occur. Yes, but an average could be interesting anyway, and your entry is a good start point. Best regards, -- Technical Support http://www.monbebe.net Un site pour apprendre a etre parents From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 28 19:07:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA18109; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:07:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.sparknet.net (mail.sparknet.net [207.67.22.140]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA18102 for ; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:07:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from z ([206.230.221.34]) by mail.sparknet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA15057 for ; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 21:16:00 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20000128211247.00975320@207.67.22.140> X-Sender: chriss@207.67.22.140 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 21:19:27 -0600 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Christopher Knight Subject: Re: List server performance In-Reply-To: <17442.000127@monbebe.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=====================_4343643==_.ALT" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk --=====================_4343643==_.ALT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 10:36 AM 1/27/00 +0100, Monbebe Admin wrote: >Hello List-Managers, >Is there (a) comparative table between different list servers, >in term of posting performances ? One of the easy to follow guides we use, is that we're able to deliver 100K emails per hour per Mbps. Cheers, Christopher M. Knight SparkLIST.com LLC =95 The Business Email List Experts =95 --------------------------------------------------------------- SparkLIST Email List Hosting, Promotions & Management Service Tel: +1 888-SparkNET, ext 212 or +1 920-490-5901, ext 212 Private Fax: +1 920-490.5909 =95 http://SparkLIST.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------- --=====================_4343643==_.ALT Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 10:36 AM 1/27/00 +0100, Monbebe Admin wrote:
Hello List-Managers,
Is there (a) comparative table between different list servers,
in term of posting performances ?


One of the easy to follow guides we use, is that we're
able to deliver 100K emails per hour per Mbps. 

Cheers,
Christopher M. Knight
SparkLIST.com LLC =95 The Business Email List Experts =95
---------------------------------------------------------------
SparkLIST Email List Hosting, Promotions & Management Service
Tel: +1 888-SparkNET, ext 212  or   +1 920-490-5901, ext 212   
Private Fax: +1 920-490.5909  =95  http://SparkLIST.com/    
---------------------------------------------------------------
--=====================_4343643==_.ALT-- From list-managers-owner Fri Jan 28 19:22:58 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA18174; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:15:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.sparknet.net (mail.sparknet.net [207.67.22.140]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA18167 for ; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 19:15:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from z ([206.230.221.34]) by mail.sparknet.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA15202 for ; Fri, 28 Jan 2000 21:24:40 -0600 (CST) Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20000128212646.00a4acb0@207.67.22.140> X-Sender: listu@207.67.22.140 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 21:28:17 -0600 To: List-Managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Christopher Knight Subject: Re: Mailing list promotion In-Reply-To: <200001131128.MAA15257@golf.dax.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 12:34 PM 1/13/00 +0100, Annie wrote: >I'm fascinated with the topics on this list, but also feel like I need a >list for mailing list promotion. Do you guys know of any such list? We've got 9,100+ members on the http://New-List.com/ service and it's free. You're welcome to sign up online and promote your list. You can only submit your list once per lifetime. Cheers, Chris From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 29 19:25:41 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id TAA01957; Sat, 29 Jan 2000 19:19:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from ingleside.ingleside.on.ca (ingleside.ingleside.on.ca [205.210.145.2]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id TAA01950 for ; Sat, 29 Jan 2000 19:19:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from sharon-p133 (x42ing.ingleside.on.ca [205.210.145.42] (may be forged)) by ingleside.ingleside.on.ca (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id WAA31499 for ; Sat, 29 Jan 2000 22:33:05 -0500 Message-Id: <200001300333.WAA31499@ingleside.ingleside.on.ca> X-Sender: sharon@pop.listhost.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0.1 Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 17:51:30 -0500 To: list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Sharon Tucci Subject: Excite/worldnet.att.net? In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Do any of you know if Excite.com and worldnet.att.net are starting to do something different about accepting email or if they've been having mail problems? (Our logs are overflowing the last two days with problems with delivering to both services.) Thanks, Sharon Tucci From list-managers-owner Sat Jan 29 21:25:28 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id VAA03961; Sat, 29 Jan 2000 21:13:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from plaidworks.com (plaidworks.com [209.239.169.200]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id VAA03954 for ; Sat, 29 Jan 2000 21:13:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from [209.239.169.197] (a197.plaidworks.com [209.239.169.197] (may be forged)) by plaidworks.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA17722 ; Sat, 29 Jan 2000 21:29:43 -0800 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200001300333.WAA31499@ingleside.ingleside.on.ca> References: <200001300333.WAA31499@ingleside.ingleside.on.ca> Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 21:26:53 -0800 To: Sharon Tucci , list-managers@GreatCircle.COM From: Chuq Von Rospach Subject: Re: Excite/worldnet.att.net? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk At 5:51 PM -0500 1/28/2000, Sharon Tucci wrote: > Do any of you know if Excite.com and worldnet.att.net are > starting to do something different about accepting email or > if they've been having mail problems? (Our logs are overflowing > the last two days with problems with delivering to both > services.) I've been seeing problems with a few places, but mostly home/webtv. I think there's a chunk of the net misbehaving, and that the SMTP hosts are behind it. whose SMTP hosts depends on which way you're going through that connection. -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com) Pokemon is a game where children go into the woods and capture furry little creatures and then bring them home and teach them to pit fight. From list-managers-owner Mon Jan 31 16:26:53 2000 Received: (majordom@localhost) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-Lists-980720-1) id PAA00542; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 15:58:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from claude.akamai.com (access-exodus.akamai.com [216.34.99.9]) by honor.greatcircle.com (8.8.5/Honor-980202-1) with ESMTP id PAA00535 for ; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 15:58:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (from dshaw@localhost) by claude.akamai.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id TAA20377 for list-managers@greatcircle.com; Mon, 31 Jan 2000 19:12:54 -0500 Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 19:12:54 -0500 From: David Shaw To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Subject: Remarq? Message-ID: <20000131191254.B19930@akamai.com> Mail-Followup-To: list-managers@greatcircle.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.1i X-PGP-Fingerprint: 3CB3B415/2048/4D 96 83 18 2B AF BE 45 D0 07 C4 07 51 37 B3 18 X-URL: http://www.jabberwocky.com/ X-Phase-Of-Moon: The Moon is Waning Crescent (18% of Full) X-Pointless-Random-Number: 28 X-Silly-Header: It sure is. x-cc: foobarfoobar foobar Sender: list-managers-owner@GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk Can anyone out there tell me anything about Remarq.com? They seem to be doing odd things with subscribing pseudo-users.. I just got a subscription for a "Q_1003036_m1key@lists.remarq.com". David -- David Shaw | dshaw@jabberwocky.com | WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/ +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." - Jeremy S. Anderson