From: Hannu Kaikonen (haka@rapid.lpt.fi)
Date: Thu May 22 2003 - 08:14:22 EEST
Hello
It is true that I've haven't been as active as I should have been, and
thus you've been the ones to face the problems. I'm truly sorry for this, it just was the time
for me to prioritize my time and work came first (well, since without my
paychecks I'd be totally unable to keep the list running at all, so maybe it was worth it) and my
work took me away from internet for a while (internet over mobile phone is not really that
feasible solution yet). I do not work for or within the RP industry, my employer has just
about nothing to do
with RP - to me this is just a matter of passion...
Nevertheless I haven't abandoned you, on the contrary I've been trying to
find out exactly what to do with the problems. So far I've pinpointed the cause of the multiple emails.
Once again it was outside rapid - one of our subscribers had porely
configured emailserver and every email was sent back to rp-ml again... Not the first time this
has happened. It would be so much easier if all of us would follow the standards... Well
meanwhile I'll just keep on dreaming.
What about the spam problem?
The software we're currently using is majordomo. We are filtering all incoming emails. Filtering is based on
international RBL list and beleave or not, we do block more spams that come through.
Total blocking of the spams is impossible unless the whole list is moderated. We are looking
for a _good_ third-party filtering (anti-spam if you wish) software, but finding one
that works is not easy. I'm more than happy if you can suggest something. The problems we are facing at the moment with most filtering software are related to the nature of the list.
We are running an international list with a wide range of different kind of configurations in subscribers servers. Quite a few of our subscribers are actually sending their emails from a different address than they're subscribed from, so address based
filtering, like subscribers only would not work all that well. Filtering based on domains
will not help, spams are often send from places like hotmail, aol etc. Filtering out
those domains would leave a lot of us outside the list. Checking the validity of the senders
address will cause more problems than solve them. This is widely used so that if the sender
filed differs from the one found from the hearders, the email will be blocked. It works,
this is why a lot of people suddenly stopped receiving rp-ml emails...
At this point I have to remind you that I'm not that ingenius with
computers some of you are, so if I'm wrong, please correct me.
Let me see, what else could we use.. yes, we could use some heuristic
analysisis of the body of the messages, search for "illegal" words or combinations... well that
might work filter out some, but do you remember the "Nigerians". They misspelled some words
they knew filtering systems are trying to block... it really has to have a good
heuristic analysis to fix that...
Of course we could change the list address. Well we did that a year ago,
and they've found us again. Surely we could change it and keep the new name a secret - but
that kind of waters down the basic idea of sharing information...
So now you have some idea of what I'm facing up to... I will keep on
searching, and if you have suggestions, please do let me know.
The other lists?
I do appreciate the idea of preserving the rp-ml. I do not oppose people
seting up lists of their own. It's just that I Wish people would use some other name than
rp-ml. Put up a list and run it - find your own subscribers, I will join your list if it
is interesting enough. Just do not try to make people believe that your list is rp-ml
(or connected to it in any ways) - rp-ml has some level of reputation (good or bad - I don't
know about that) and I hate to see people take advantage of that to promote their own intentions.
Remove your self.
Just send a message to majordomo@rapid.lpt.fi with a line
unsubscribe rp-ml
in the body of the message (not the subject line). And that should do it.
Finally
If I've missed some important question - it's possible, there were over
150 messages that I read last night - I might have missed something. Just
send me a note and I'll try to answer asap. You might want to use the
alternative address rapid.dude@luukku.com if you want to get intough me
personally.
I hope you all can accept my humble appologies for the inconvenience. I
thank you all for your patience - I can only assure that I do the best I
can to get rid of the spams and viruses.
Now, I'll just grap my towel...
Yours truly,
Hannu Kaikonen
aka. Rapid Dude
*owner rp-ml*
Share and Enjoy!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Sat Jan 17 2004 - 15:17:34 EET