I hear a lot of problems with email on Grex, and yes it is a big problem (with, to be fair, no quick-fix technical solutions). To a certain degree, I don't see why anyone would rely on Grex for mail in this day and age. To that end, I would not be sad to see Grex not offer email. However, there is a simple policy solution to all of this - that is email should only be available to members. That way, we don't support (or can easily track) email abuse.65 responses total.
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I use email to try to help people learn to use 'talk'. At least allow non-members to send/receive mail within grex.
I'd like to focus on the technical approaches to making grex unattractive to spammers before proscribing mail entirely. I believe mail within grex should always be available to everyone, regardless of what gets decided for off system mail privileges.
Anyone else think the title of this item is spooky ?
I can tell you that I first came to grex 10 years ago because it offered internet e-mail. If it didn't, I wouldn't have come, and I certainly wouldn't have become a member just to get internet e-mail (at least I believe so). I do believe that internet e-mail is / continues to be one drawing card for new grex users & potentially members. The problem is that this has also been abused. Also that e-mail got wiped out.
Ten years ago is, like, a long time ago by Internet standards. There are lots of mega-sites offering free and dependable mail service. We can't possibly compete with that and we shouldn't be spending time trying to do so. Keep those who are here and (for whatever reason) dependent on our mail connected? Sure. But that's about it.
I don't think it is that grex is or ever has been trying to compete with Google mail, hotmail or yahoo on the mail front. It's more that offering access...whether to our online community through the conferencing system or to programming tools and a shell, to mail...on the most open possible basis is fundamental to what we are. The problem is that the economics have changed and we have to tighten things up. I've probably taken down 20 or more spamming accounts in the last week or so, Steve and others likely more. Cleaning up their mess is more than a little annoying but with all that, I still want to keep mail available and available to all, not just members. We just have to throw in some more controls, to get the balance back between openness and the realities of operating an open access system on today's internet.
Are there other free email accounts that don't require a browser or pop mail?
There are a bunch of freenets out there.
new users should have to wait a month to send email, no spammer will wait that long and as for the rest of us we can already send mail so this shouldn't be an issue.
I'm hoping you are right. But yesterday, I identified and closed down a number of "sleeper" accounts that had been opened sometime in December and not used to spam until earlier this week (just before I shutdown mail access for newusers as it happens). Seems some of these folks are fairly committed to their "art". So we will still need to implement rate throttling because some people may simply chose to accumulate a portfolio of accounts in anticipation of planned spamming runs.
What about an opt-in registration system for local users who have no other email access? The more I think about it, the less I see why grex needs to offer outgoing email access to non-members. The only edge case I can think of is those users who e.g., Sindi sets up with grex as their only means of Internet access. Given that we can identify those users by the tty's they login from, and theoretically someone can verify them with a local telephone call, can we not set up a system where local users request verification for off-site email privileges, and by default off-site email is denied to non-members? I mean, if someone is logging into grex over the Internet anyway, odds are good that they already have email access.
Exactly...
I agree with Bruce in #7 very much. Given the controls that we now had with email, I'm fairly confident that we can do this.
Hi, I am a fairly new Grex user. Just signed in. My name is Vivek (pronounced Vee Wake). Just thought you might want my perspective as someone totally new to grex. I would like grex outbound mail. Th reason i dug out a shell account on Google was because i thought that i may be having problems with someones SPAM filter. I assumed that i would get through to them from cyberspace. I use yahoo and thought that they might have blocked yahoo inbound. Anyway, it would be wonderful if we had outbound mail but only if it could be implemented in a safe manner! BTW: What i've seen of grex i've liked! I think mail (outbound) is a important draw. Most things in life are dangerous if used improperly. We don't stop using them just because it's in-convenient or dangerous. We try to figure out a safe way to do so. Umm..I won't be doing the figuring or writing of code..so..if you have the time ..heck! fix the freaking thing please!! :)
Hi Vivek - welcome to Grex! I appreciate hearing your perspective.
The reason new users don't have outbound mail right now is that grex was (and maybe still is) on a blacklist so that mail from here to AOL and other places bounces. We got on the blacklist because of spammers sending from here.
No, we did not turn off outbound mail due to any blacklisting of grex. It was turned off due to the amount of outbound spam mail being sent from grex by users who seemed to have created accounts just for that reason. Outbound mail for new users would have been turned off regardless of any blacklist we ended up on.
We turned off the mail to stop spammers because we were on a blacklist and wanted to get off and not get on again. I think we are agreeing.
Regarding #18; The two are isomorphic.
The blacklisting was NOT the reason. It was in the interest of good community relations to stop spammers. It is our duty to do so when we can. Those who blacklisted us do not know that we turned off outbound email and really don't care whether we did or not. We have been blacklisted before and did nothing about it. The inordinate amount of spam going out this time is what prompted turning off outbound mail from new users.
Okay.
In other words, A caused B and A caused C, but B did not cause C.
In reality, minutae is more important than substance.
In English, however, minutiae ARE more important than substance.
Right, Eric.
So did we ever get off the blacklists?
We probably won't be off the blacklists until we find a way to be sure newusers won't be able to spam-a-lot from Grex. But this in NO WAY means we turned off mail because of being blacklisted. Having trouble keeping up? See Eric. He rules. ;-)
You can usually get off those blacklists as soon as you stop spamming. Since new users can't send email, and the plethora of ``sleeper accounts'' is being cut down on, it would seem logical that grex will be getting off of more and more of these blacklists as time passes (either by expiration due to time without a complaint, or someone finding out about said blacklist and taking the time to contact the list administrator). Enough suggestions have been made to raise the barrier to getting email access sufficiently to make it largely a non-issue. All that needs to be done is to implement them. Bruce Howard has already done some of that. I don't understand why people think it's such a big deal that they feel compelled to say, ``this in NO WAY means we turned off mail because of being blacklisted.'' I mean, why not? Being blacklisted was one of the means by which grex found out about the problem of inordinate spam being sent from grex (I don't think anyone was paying attention to the mail queue; this problem's been going on for months with no action until recently. Particularly until the blacklisting started happening and people started saying, ``hey, my mail is bouncing with this blacklist message...'' at which someone said, ``holy SHIT we're sending out a lot of spam!'' This is what I mean when I say that the two are isomorphic). It is, therefore, one of the reasons grex decided to do something about the spam. Thus, it is one of the reasons why grex decided to turn off mail. What's the big deal about that? You people act like it's somehow Bad if that's the case. Why?
Is there any progress on setting a maximum number of outgoing mails per day per account so that new users can send out mail again?
It is funny because I thought we were turning off email both because of being blacklisted and because it was important to us not to be a source of spam so we could be a good member of the internet community.
why did the chicken cross the road ?
How do you know the chicken crossed the road? Couldn't the road have just as easily moved underneath the chicken? The the chicken did in fact, cross the road, what reference points would it have to know that it was the object in motion?
argh now i am not even sure if it was a chicken.
probably a cat.
This response has been erased.
Woops, didn't mean to erase the last message. I just joined, but since I can't send or receive mail, there's nothing else for me to do except post chicken crossing messages. To show the deer how to do it. The New York City Police say, "You give me five minutes with the chicken and I'll find out." BILLY GRAHAM: And God said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing. Hemingway: He crossed the road. To die. In the rain. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: I see a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads and no one will ask why? Einstein: Why did the atoms cross the road? Because it was time to split! Get it? Time to split!! Atoms! Bill Clinton: To the best of my recollection, that chicken did not engage in what I would call "road crossing behavior."
Have you tried receiving mail? I think it is just outgoing mail that is blocked, which means you can send mail to other grexers. Feel free to email me. Since the staff do not appear to be even working on a way to block spammers by restricting the number of mails new users can send out each day, they might be willing to grant you outgoing mail privileges if you ask nicely, as the first such case. I doubt that a real spammer would bother posting silly jokes - maybe we should make that a requirement for mail privileges.
I've just discovered a way to send mail from my new user account even though it's supposedly blocked. I wonder how long before spammers exploit the weakness. -perch
I'm no Java specialist, by the way. Though, I can confidently say that from the majority of respondees so far, I have more experience in Java development and technologies.
I could send mail by a process involving telnet, I forget how. I think I somehow telnetted to my ISPs mail server. But non-members don't have telnet privileges. Hey staff, can we give perch outgoing email now that he knows how to get around the block anyway?
I've been experimenting to see how much I can do and right now nothing works. No mail coming or going. Not even to other people on grex. Can't even mail to myself. Is it just my account or does everyone have email problems? Do I need to post more jokes to get things working? -perch
I got mail from you, perch, and I answered it. What mail program(s) have you tried for reading your mail? There is no need to sign your posts with your login - it appears on line one (using picospan).
hi perch ! don't listen to keesan ; you can sign your posts as you wish ! -naftee le magnifique
No mail. I use pine but also checked my /var/mail/ file and it's empty, except for the sytem generated message. I even tried sending mail to myself from grex and it didn't work. I sort of feel signing the post ends it. Otherwise I feel like I just stopped in the
Grex mail goes to some place nonstandard, I forget where. If you are not getting mail that I sent you or that you sent yourself, the staff ought to look into the problem. They were only supposed to disable mail going out of grex, not even mail coming into grex, for new users.
You were right, there is a /var/mail/perch, and if I send you a mail the size of that file does not increase, whereas /var/mail/keesan gets larger if I write to myself. I hope staff reads this item soon and fixes this problem (and gives you outgoing mail privileges).
keesan, lost your mail. But I'm getting things straightened out. Just left out a " in one configuration file.
ocean perch is mighty good fish; wouldn't you agree ?
I use the English pronunciation, "smith". Sent to root and staff my discovery of how to send spam from new accounts and I'm hoping to get a reward of full mail privileges.
I have been reading these posts, as suggested by the notice about coop 3004 & coop 306. And being new here, I am dismayed at the problems. Yet they are problems other systems suffer. I signed up here for Grex service with the hope of regaining access to Lynx & Pine software. I was occationally using M-Net, both system long distance for me, from Florida. Here in Fla. the best unix system was only a kiosk, it was shut down years back. When M-Net basicly disconnected, I searched & found Grex & several others. Junk mail is here to stay for all systems, & AOL causes me to receive junk on Fastmail.fm email. May I ask if the consideration of how a new user signs up has been considered. What if a newuser must mail in an application as we did for the SEFLIN.org system here in south Fla. The SEFLIN folks did need to open the mail, review the application, then mail back the user ID & temporary password, but it did provide a screening effect. Other systems do the same today. I do not suggest the proof of ID photo crazy tribe with certified notary seal, but unless the newuser can provide a valid mailing address, no access. To offset the cost of this remailing, the newuser must provide a SASE. Fewer newusers might be spam bumbs, & while staff must process the mail, they would not be busy dumping spam accounts from the system as much.
Are you paying AOL for internet access and if so why? There are plenty of cheaper and better ways to get online. Perch, do you think there are new users who really can't afford $6/month contribution to grex's operating expenses in order to get outgoing email? Would it be helpful if people could have a 1-month introductory membership for $1, which would provide outgoing email, to be extended at the full rate later? Would this discourage spammers?
keesan, the password file has over 35,000 entries. How many are active? I was starting to check but ran into disk quota errors. You could be talking about a lot of money. What are the operating expenses, and where does the money go? I'm not in a hurry to fund another beaurocracy.
Grex's operating expenses are posted in this group, usually once a month, by the treasurer. Grex has a lot of users (as in, people who create accounts) but very few of those are actually active; this system is rather a backwater in terms of technology and usage.
I tried to use the search feature but it just keeps crashing.
Re #54: I thought accounts that hadn't been accessed in 3 months were deleted from the passwd file.
We have about 40 paying members right now, which is covering the phone and internet connections (relatively cheap thanks to a kind local ISP), but probably not leaving anything extra for hardware upgrades. Paying members get outgoing FTP and telnet, not as a perk but because it prevents jerks from taking advantage of grex to annoy people elsewhere, and jerks don't seem to want to pay for FTP or telnet. Outgoing email has now been added to the list of things we have to keep irresponsible users away from. Perhaps there could be a half-membership category with email but not telnet?
Regarding #56; It depends. The reap process is semi-manual (there's a program that does it, but someone has to actually run the program, and sometimes that doesn't happen for several months at a time). What's more, there are a lot of people who create accounts, login once or twice, and never come back. This happens frequently, so while the number of entries in the password file is medium size, the number who actually stick around relative to the total number of entries is almost negligable.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
Hi All, I am new to Grex and had hoped to use it in part as a second email account to bolster my Freeshell.org account (it does go down sometimes...horrors!). I have read Coop 304 and 306 and have one problem and a question that I haven't yet seen answered (maybe because there is not answer yet). First, before I noticed the message in the login blurb, I sent an email message to 'staff@cyberspace.org' about the lack of email access and it bounced because the address is acutally a link to an external email site (hvcn.org). How can I communicate with the staff if my email can't get to them? Secondly, has any decisions been made as to when a new user becomes trusted? Do I need to become a member? I haven't seen this mentioned in the faq or in either Coop 304 or 306. Thanks for the help folks and I must say I like what I see of this community. I hope to hang on the music board an awful lot and make some new friends.
This group has a horror of requiring membership for email access. I'm not sure what the real answer is about when new email accounts will be enabled, but you've found the right conference to ask in.
Make membership a requirement for email access. Come on, people, this isn't 1991 anymore.
How about giving outgoing email access to anyone who asks for it politely in this item and also pays for one month of membership while providing written identification? Freeshell has been down for most of the past three days. The fastest way to get staff attention is to post to a conference. I think staff gets bombarded with so many email they can't read them in real time.
Thanks all. I guess it's membership time. Though maybe outgoing mail privleges outght to be awarded to anyone who can figure out Perch's hack around the block (unless, of course, that has already been 'fixed'!). I understand the problem that Grex is having with this issue and there isn't a one size fits all fix as has so elegantly been demonstrated in this thread. The fact is there will ALWAYS be a way around the system, even with face to face meet and greets etc. Maybe a good compromise is to limit every one to one address per email. It would be fairly easy to block large mailings (say anything over 10 emails at once or something of that nature), or perhaps I ought to say it 'should' be fairly easy. I wouldn't think that would inconvience most of the Grex community (at least in my modest 4 days of experience!). But there it is. Membership isn't such a bad deal either. Caio, everyone.
Greg, do you know how to set up grex to allow sending only one email every 5 minutes, or whatever else would work to block spammers?
You have several choices: