[antlr-interest] much ado about nothing

[Jeff Vincent]

So here are the differences between regular spam and spam on this list
as I see them:
 
- There must be a real e-mail address behind the spam on this list
since the new user must confirm the subscription request before
membership is granted.
- These lists can act as another level of indirection (filter) 
    -  can control who can send e-mail (public - anyone can post,
private - members only, or newsletter - only moderators/owners can
post)
    -  can moderate the membership and/or content directly.
 
The spam I get here at work is spoofed and they can create e-mail in
bulk using different fake "From:" addresses and servers as fast as the
computer can generate them and my junk-mail filter keeps growing as I
add more and more fake addresses/domains, most of which I probably won't
ever encounter again.  Since these lists require some level of active
enrollment, it is much more difficult to automate or spoof.
 
Also, your argument that "membership moderation is useless" is valid if
the spammer always chooses a name that is "normal".  The spammers on
this list that I can recall haven't ever used normal names.  Have you
actually removed someone like mybigstick at yahoo.com and had them come
back as john.smith at yahoo.com ?  Simple new member moderation would at
least take care of the obvious cases and *if they are reported* to
whatever service they are using (like yahoo.com), we can hopefully
damper stuff like this and prevent it from happening in the future.  
 
I guess I just don't like the idea of sitting back and letting it
happen because it is difficult to completely prevent and would rather do
something about it.  Let's try new member moderation, even for a short
time.  I believe it will help and I am even willing to volunteer my time
from the (GMT-7:00) Mountain Time Zone :-)=.
 
Jeff

>>> parrt at cs.usfca.edu 12/9/2003 12:51:29 PM >>>

Moderation on membership is useless as they will simply use john.smith

as a username and we'll be none the wiser.

Moderation on each message is very unsatisfactory as we'd need perhaps

3 moderators in perhaps 4 equidistant timezones to get decent response

time on each posting.

Do you really want to add that work load given how much spam you get in

your regular mailbox?  A trivial word filter on this list would be 
sufficient for all spam since you are not getting your regular personal

email in this folder.  You're going to add a big load to remove 2 or 3

spam a day?

I truly don't see how the antlr-list problem is different than your 
regular spam problem.

Ter
--
Professor Comp. Sci., University of San Francisco
Creator, ANTLR Parser Generator, http://www.antlr.org
Co-founder, http://www.jguru.com
Co-founder, http://www.knowspam.net enjoy email again!
Co-founder, http://www.peerscope.com pure link sharing






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