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Grex > Coop13 > #376: The problems with Grex, e-mail and spam | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 480 responses total. |
keesan
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response 456 of 480:
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Mar 1 02:48 UTC 2007 |
I got to the point where it listed a fastmail folder but then said it did not
exist nor could I read any of my mail here, so deleted everything. I will
try again tomorrow. I don't plan to have more than an inbox any place but
grex. I will probably have questions. Thanks for the help.
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keesan
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response 457 of 480:
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Mar 5 19:49 UTC 2007 |
Three people have now asked for help setting up spamassassin.
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keesan
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response 458 of 480:
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Mar 9 18:40 UTC 2007 |
A fourth request, who also commented that staff has not answered emails for
two years, and he is unable to get mail sent from U of M. Could the motd also
suggest asking for help in agora item 4 instead of mailing staff? Most
questions could be answered by other users instead of staff.
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maus
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response 459 of 480:
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Mar 9 20:05 UTC 2007 |
Keesan, just a tip: keeping a running scorecard of the requests you
have received does not convince a single person of anything and simply
adds to the noise. You set and arbitrary threshold of ten requests.
When you cross that threshold, please let us know.
That said, thank you for mentioning that user's concern.
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cyklone
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response 460 of 480:
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Mar 9 23:57 UTC 2007 |
Message of the Day:
Please do not email staff about problems with spam. Staff does not respond
to such requests as they do not read their mail anymore because their
mailboxes are full of spam.
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keesan
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response 461 of 480:
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Mar 10 00:00 UTC 2007 |
This last person only wanted to know how to set up a whitelist.
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slynne
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response 462 of 480:
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Mar 10 01:00 UTC 2007 |
Is there a way to set up a whitelist on grex. That would make my life a
lot easier.
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keesan
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response 463 of 480:
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Mar 10 02:59 UTC 2007 |
You can copy the one I set up for him and change the login name, and then
copy one three-line section over as many times as you have names to whitelist.
Email me. It is an extremely simple filter, without spamassassin. Sends mail
from your whitelist to your inbox and dumps the rest. Or if you prefer the
rest can go to a spam filter and you can dump it yourself. You choose.
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slynne
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response 464 of 480:
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Mar 10 03:22 UTC 2007 |
cool I might try that when I have some time
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tod
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response 465 of 480:
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Mar 10 04:01 UTC 2007 |
Please call it a yeslist and quit the racial profiling.
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drew
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response 466 of 480:
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Mar 12 22:12 UTC 2007 |
I'm starting to get some spams on my Gmail account.
There have been two types so far. The first is the
latest version of the "I want to transfer $144
billion dollars to your account" scam. The other one
is invariably Subject-titled "Information for your
job", and is a work-at-home scam (as "Transfer
Officer") from a domain that keeps changing - usually
a variant of worldcash-somethingorother.com.
I've duly clicked the Report Spam button on each one,
but they keep coming in - the IDENTICAL content in
the case of the worldcash spam. Gmail's filters don"t
seem to be getting the message that this sort of mail
is SPAM.
Of course I get a LOT more spam here on grex...
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keesan
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response 467 of 480:
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Mar 13 02:35 UTC 2007 |
For the past few days NO spam has reached me here at grex, where I can tune
my own spam filter. About 60/day get dumped. It is very easy to add filters
on identical content. DOn't know why gmail does not do that.
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cross
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response 468 of 480:
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Mar 13 12:07 UTC 2007 |
Gmail can do that.
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keesan
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response 469 of 480:
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Mar 14 15:45 UTC 2007 |
So far six people asked for a spam filter. Two reported that it is working.
One of them got 49 spams, of which 47 were caught by spamassassin, and the
two real mails were not. 96% with no false positives. Using nothing but
spamassassin set to 2 points, with cyberspace whitelisted.
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keesan
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response 470 of 480:
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Mar 20 01:08 UTC 2007 |
Two more requests today. I have a stock filter that anyone can copy over if
they know how to edit one line. Could I change /var/mail/keesan to
/var/mail/$USER and have it work that way for just anyone?
Two people wanted whitelists, the others either wanted to dump anything with
3 points and save 2 points in a folder, or save it all. So perhaps staff
could set up some automated script allowing people to choose among these three
options. Or I can continue to send pretty much the same message to everyone
who writes me and edit the file for them. It takes about a minute.
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keesan
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response 471 of 480:
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Mar 21 13:17 UTC 2007 |
One of the volunteer guinea pigs reports NO false positives (his friends had
stopped using this address), and of 120 spams, 95 were dumped by spamassassin
set to three points, and 25 went to the spam folder or his INBOX. That is
about 80%, as I predicted, and higher if you count what went to the spam
folder, which you can delete by typing d rather than individual messages in
it.
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easlern
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response 472 of 480:
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Mar 21 14:04 UTC 2007 |
Good work, keesan!
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keesan
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response 473 of 480:
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Mar 22 16:58 UTC 2007 |
Nine people have now requested help, most of them non-conferencers. A
Mexican, a Scandinavian or two. Two Americans are reporting back. They are
keeping logs of what went where. One dumped 9 of 13 spams (the others went
to INBOX or spam folder). One asked for an additional filter because he gets
lots of spams per day and 20% of 150 is still a lot. I now have a default
filter for people who don't want to remember to read and delete the log (since
spamassassin set to 3 points has never yet caught a real mail). It dumps 3
point spam, sends 2-2.99 point spam to a spam folder, and has sections you
can customize for a whitelist or to filter on words in the message body or
subject line. One person is going to add to his filter that way. Some of
these people don't write English well enough to report back, so they are not
getting a log file of what went where. Two people only wanted a whitelist
- they will fill it in themselves. I don't know how to automate making a
whitelist.
Could I set up .procmailrc with $USER instead of the login name, and let
everyone copy over the same .procmailrc from my directory? Or from some other
location on grex, along with .forward? Maybe staff could write some script
called 'filter-spam' or the like, that would copy these files for people
without my further involvement. I could even write the script and have staff
copy it to some place on the path and leave the files in my home account.
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albaugh
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response 474 of 480:
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Mar 22 19:27 UTC 2007 |
A Mexican, a Scandanavian, and an American walked into a free shell/mail site..
...
;-)
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krokus
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response 475 of 480:
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Mar 23 01:49 UTC 2007 |
Did they run into the priest and the rabbi?
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keesan
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response 476 of 480:
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Mar 23 22:11 UTC 2007 |
Someone from India wrote that he had been trying to make his own .procmailrc
and had failed, and thanks for mine, which was working. Then my mail to him
bounced. How do I get hold of him to let him know something is broken?
My filter worked for other people. He probably tried to improve it.
USER is not his real login.
pipe to |/usr/local/bin/procmail
generated by USER@grex.cyberspace.org
The following text was generated during the delivery attempt:
------ pipe to |/usr/local/bin/procmail
generated by USER@grex.cyberspace.org ------
procmail: Lock failure on "/var/mail/USER.lock"
procmail: Error while writing to "/var/mail/USER"
[two more copies of these two lines follow]
------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------
Subject: Re: Lots of spam
> Sindi,
>
> Thanks for all the help. I have copied the .procmail and .forward in my
> folder. I had a .procmail myself, but it did not work - most likely reason
> being I could not set it up correctly.
> I hope to get some relief from mails related to viagra, free holiday on hawai
> island, penis enlargement medicine, personal loans - all of which I do not
> need.
> Thanks once again.
USER from India
Followed by my response.
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keesan
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response 477 of 480:
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Mar 24 15:20 UTC 2007 |
Please could some staff member edit .procmailrc for guntun and change
/var/mail/guntum to /var/mail/guntun. My goof. Or even just delete the file
so I can write him about this. Or copy over ~keesan/procmailrc.guntun to
there.
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gelinas
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response 478 of 480:
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Mar 25 00:58 UTC 2007 |
(I fixed it, Sindi.)
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keesan
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response 479 of 480:
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Mar 25 02:29 UTC 2007 |
Thanks, Gelinas. I will notify the other staff members.
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keesan
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response 480 of 480:
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Mar 26 03:31 UTC 2007 |
Tenth request for a spam filter, from Jogya[karta?]. I now have a universal
procmailrc.user to be copied to .procmailrc that sends mail to
/var/mail/$USER, which I tested on myself.
Copy that and .forward. Could copies of these files be put some place other
than my home directory, and a script be put on the path to copy them
automatically, perhaps even from the menu?
My default - throw out anything with 3 points, put anything with 2-2.99 points
in spam folder, do not keep a log. One guinea pig said his log got so big
he was near quota on disk space. Everyone has been getting 80% of spam
discarded and most of the rest in the spam folder. I put in some samples for
whitelists and for sending list mail to a separate folder and for sending mail
with certain strings in the message body to the spam folder.
Two people just wanted to set up whitelists. I have not heard back from them.
We could have a spamfilter script and a whitelist script.
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