[sf-lug] MEGA Invitation (and Mailman, and what to do and not do - and even why)

[Michael Paoli]

Rick,

You've also *excellently* covered these points before!  :-)
And thanks for that.

Sometimes I wonder if it might just be better and/or more
efficient to write something like "See previous:" and include
link the the previous, which already highly well covered the matter.
Okay, so, yeah, maybe not quite so many folks that ought to read it
would, but ... I dunno, maybe it'd help the "link juice", and
possibly even save some folks some time? ... or not?

Anyway, just a thought.

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] MEGA Invitation
> Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2016 21:40:09 -0700

> Quoting Jim Stockford (jim at well.com):
>
>> thanks for the info.
>
> Umm... I was hoping for 'Yes, OK, I'll do that.'  ;->
>
>> just to note: my approach is to checking the box above the list of
>> waiting messages to discard all being held... box,
>
> You can do that if you want -- but it's something of a waste of  
> time.  The spam
> will expire out automatically without you do anything.  Which is my
> basic advice.  Do that checkbox ('Discard all messages marked Defer')
> and hit the 'Submit All Data' button -- the ones at either the top or
> bottom of the page -- if you _happen_ to have gone to the admin page for
> other reasons, and for some reason wish to empty the queue.  But point
> is, it's a waste of time going to the page _just_ to empty the queue.
>
>> Then I scroll down verifying the one-time-only fake names to the
>> bottom, where I check the discard...  box then click submit.
>
> Yeah, well, please do _not_ check the discard... box.   I assume you
> mean this:
>
>    [ ] Add izswigrgz at bbjjdtpwj.org to one of these sender filters:
>    ( ) Accepts  ( ) Holds  ( ) Rejects  (o) Discards
>
> Please do _not_ check the checkbox to the left of the word 'add'.
> This gums up Mailman's filtering tasks with pointless discard rules for
> fake e-mail addresses.
>
> In the rare case where the (inevitably forged) claim 'From:' address is
> that of a real person, you would be doing worse damage:  Given that a
> real innocent person's address was probably forged, your adding that
> person to a to-be-discarded roster hurts someone who did nothing wrong,
> for no benefit.
>
> So, basically, don't use that feature unless you're quite sure you know
> what you're doing.
>
>
>
>> I understand correctly that that does not clog up Mailman, yes?
>
> I'm sorry, but I am quite unsure by what you mean when you say 'that'.
>
> Using the 'Add izswigrgz at bbjjdtpwj.org to one of these sender filters'
> checkbox with '(o) Discard' selected _does_ clog up Mailman.  Please
> stop doing that.
>
> It creates pointless work for Mailman, and does absolutely no good,
> _and_ it wastes your time, too.
>
> Basically:  That stuff I said under 'Short version':  Please do that.
> Thanks!  It's really that simple.
>
> If you grokked that, then 'Yes, OK, I'll do that' would be a nice thing.
> If the 'Short version' wasn't comprehensible, please advise.
>
>
>
>> About a year ago I did click some names telling Mailman to disallow
>> (drop) them, but after a few days, it occurred to me that I was
>> probably making Mailman check inbound From: fields to no effect, so I
>> discontinued doing that.
>
>
> 'Names'?  Possibly you mean e-mail addresses?
>
> If you mean e-mail addresses, thank you for discontinuing that.
> But FWIW, there were hundreds of e-mail addresses in the to-be-discarded
> roster.  Almost all completely pointless, at best.
>
>> Here's header info for the email
>
> You know, this appears to be the spam mail that everyone's already seen,
> the one that that transited the mailing list and bore a non-subscribed
> address ('support at mega.nz') as the From: address.  I already had that --
> it's what made me raise the alert about something odd going on.
>
>> (Note at the bottom that  lu4  seems to be sending
>> email invitations.)
>
> Indeed.  lu4's evidently a host at mega.nz.  And?
>
> That mail should not have been accepted for redelivery to the
> subscribers, as it was from non-subscribed alleged sender
> 'support at mega.nz'.  That would land it in the admin queue, whence it
> would expire out five days later unless manually processed (approved,
> discarded, rejected) by a listadmin.
>
>
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