Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 500.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: Robin Smith <rasmith@aristotle.tamu.edu> (45)
Subject: Re: 16.497 anti-spam device for ELM?
[2] From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance) (101)
Subject: Generations and Generators: KM
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 09:26:47 +0000
From: Robin Smith <rasmith@aristotle.tamu.edu>
Subject: Re: 16.497 anti-spam device for ELM?
>"Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty
<willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>)" <willard@lists.village.virginia.edu> writes:
> would any of the subscribers to Humanist have a wee bit
> of technical knowledge to share? i've come across
> someone using a very smart automated response system
> for dealing with spam. A message is sent on the first
> occasion of contact requesting confirmation. I quote
> from one such message:
This is probably a message from a whitelist generator. Spam killers do
often block legitimate emails; one solution is to maintain a whitelist of
users from whom mail will be accepted. On the assumption that spam usually
has forged return addresses or worse, one way to generate such a list is to
ask for confirmations from messages that come (or appear to come) from
addresses not on the whitelist. A confirming reply to a request indicates
that (1) the reply path is real, not forged, and (2) there is something at
the other end with enough intelligence to respond to the request (a human,
one hopes).
> Does anyone know of how to set something like this up
> with ELM?
These things are usually implemented at the MRA level (Mail Relay
Agent), e.g. sendmail or packages like PerlMX, not at the level of
user agents such as Elm (though you could write your own procmail
rules). If the spam isn't dropped at the mail relay level, then it's
still imposing a load on the system.
> I confess I still use ELM because of its
> bounce feature which has permitted me and countless
> retro-Unix fans to make those offending servers take a
> hit. I do like the method outlined above as being even
> more efficient and effective. A would be spam sender
> would face server crash if the request for confirmation
> was sent back for every message sent out.
Bouncing spam is generally a waste of time, since there's no reason to suppose
any of the reply information in the header is reliable. (You could perhaps
extract a reliable address from the 'envelope'). Moreover, spam often
comes from hijacked accounts or throwaway accounts, and the spammer doesn't
care
if such accounts are overwhelmed (the spammer's ISP might, of course). The
reply also doubles the load on one's local mail relay. In my opinion, the best
thing to do with spam is drop it silently (and, if there were only a way to
identify
it reliably, at the mail-relay level).
Robin Smith
Department of Philosophy rasmith@tamu.edu
Texas A&M University Voice (979) 845-5696
College Station, TX 77843-4237 FAX (979) 845-0458
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 09:27:42 +0000
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Generations and Generators: KM
Willard,
I know that "knowledge management" maybe one of your least
favourite expressions to issue out of the lingua franca of admin
English. However you and subscribers to Humanist may be
interested in the knowledge and information management questions
that arise out of this mildly edited exchange:
Forwarded message: >
>From lachance Thu Feb 20 15:00:52 2003 >
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 15:00:52 -0500 (EST) >
feeling very australian today -- a la boomerang...
Are there any [humanities computing] students that might want to leave
their mark and grab some info and produce a resource? :)
Raises a very interesting question about the function of lists and their
archives... Wendell Piez and I have exchanged some messages on the
TEI-list about the XSL-list and the searchability of its archive. The
topic may be likewise of interest to the subscribers of Humanist.
> >
> > No, I didn't reply to Humanist, I thought maybe it would be better (if
> > I may presume so) for you to compile some responses into a message.
> > >
> > > Have you sent a copy of your reply to Humanist? There are many others
> > > that would be interested in as I say "leveraging UNIX" investments :)
> > >
> > >>
> > >> If you have administrator privileges on the machine, or are using
> > >> IMAP,
> > >> you should be able to use a Perl module to pre-process your mail. See:
> > >>
> > >> http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_perl/cpan-
> > >> search?search=spam+mail&filetype=+distribution+name+or+description
> > >>
> > >> (or search CPAN for spam and mail)
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>> Does anyone know of how to set something like this up with ELM? I
> > >>> confess
> > >>> I still use ELM because of its bounce feature which has permitted me
> > >>> and
> > >>> countless retro-Unix fans to make those offending servers take a hit.
> > >>> I do
> > >>> like the method outlined above as being even more efficient and
> > >>> effective.
> > >>> A would be spam sender would face server crash if the request for
> > >>> confirmation was sent back for every message sent out.
> > >>>
> > >>> Any one point me to the ELM-friendly version?
> > >>>
> > >>> Thanks in advance
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
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