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Grex > Coop13 > #376: The problems with Grex, e-mail and spam | |
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krj
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The problems with Grex, e-mail and spam
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Nov 10 21:35 UTC 2006 |
This item is for discussion of Grex's current problems with e-mail,
and possible future directions Grex might take with e-mail
service.
The goal is to keep large-scale, big-picture discussion out of
item:4, the "System Problems" item.
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| 480 responses total. |
krj
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response 1 of 480:
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Nov 10 21:39 UTC 2006 |
What I wanted to tell Sindi is that e-mail systems everywhere are
staggering under the load of incoming spam, and network services
everywhere are plagued with problems with outgoing spam.
What's happening is not a Grex-specific problem. Just in the last
week, I think I have seen a 30-50% spike in the amount of spam
arriving at my work address.
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nharmon
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response 2 of 480:
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Nov 10 21:41 UTC 2006 |
I only use Grexmail to communicate with other Grexers. What would be an
easy way of redirecting email not from Grex to /dev/null?
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easlern
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response 3 of 480:
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Nov 10 21:44 UTC 2006 |
Re 1: That's interesting because we're seeing the same trend at my workplace.
At this rate, the whole system will be overwhelmed in just a few months.
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jadecat
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response 4 of 480:
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Nov 10 21:53 UTC 2006 |
I work for a computer services company- and we've had several of our
clients also complaining in a huge increase in spam.
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easlern
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response 5 of 480:
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Nov 10 21:55 UTC 2006 |
We have to stop them before they fill up the tubes with internets!
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ball
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response 6 of 480:
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Nov 10 23:24 UTC 2006 |
Re #2: I believe I would like to do that too.
Do Internet email messages have any kind of indelible post-
mark to indicate its source? I understand the From: field
is trivial to forge, but are they marked with a source IP
address? Can Grex be configured to refuse connections from
certain IP addresses or networks?
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keesan
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response 7 of 480:
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Nov 11 00:13 UTC 2006 |
Procmail can easily refuse mail from any IP number, or from senders on various
blacklists such as NJBL, SORBS, etc. The problem is that places like grex
end up on these lists when one spammer abuses them. I just add more IP
numbers when spam starts slipping through, but this week's spammer is mailing
from all over the place. I think today I got about 30-40 Hi messages all
addressed to some name starting in k, so I filtered on that. Some of the k
names were keesan but most were not. I presume other people are getting other
letters of the alphabet. And many of my other spams have started arriving
in triplicate (every few hours) in the past week or two - @grex, cyberspace,
and grex.cyberspace.
Most mail providers use a spam filter by default. You might be able to turn
it off at some places. Would this work for grex?
Why is there no inbox size limit on some accounts?
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ball
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response 8 of 480:
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Nov 11 00:53 UTC 2006 |
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the spams that seem to
come from all (IP) directions at once were generated by
machines that have been infected or otherwise compromised.
:-(
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mcnally
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response 9 of 480:
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Nov 11 03:03 UTC 2006 |
A huge amount of the spam that reaches your mailbox originates from
"zombie" or "bot" machines -- ordinary homeowner's computers that are
infected deliberately by a spammer using a customized virus or worm
that gives him control over the machine. They do this largely for two
reasons: (1) it makes IP-based blocking of spam sources much harder
because the spam comes from hundreds of thousands, possibly millions,
of sources, and (2) when a computer gets blocked for spamming or its
ISP shuts it down, the virus victims are the ones affected, not the
spammers.
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ball
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response 10 of 480:
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Nov 11 04:05 UTC 2006 |
That was my suspicion. MS Windows has a lot to answer for.
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