[freetds] Fw: freetds list settings to reduce backscatter, junk

James K. Lowden jklowden at schemamania.org
Wed Feb 13 14:04:42 EST 2008


I received the below mail from the ibiblio sysadmin.  I changed the
subscription options as requested.  

The effect is that mail sent from an unsubscribed address will be silently
discarded.  My apologies now for the ensuing inconvenience.  

If you would, please devise and deploy a spam-proof replacement for SMTP. 
I would nominate you for the Email Nobel Prize.  I bet they'd create one. 


--jkl

Begin forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:04:21 -0500
Subject: freetds list settings to reduce backscatter, junk


[The list] is set such that nonmember attempts to post are rejected by
default. This results in a significant amount of "backscatter" when
spammers forge the from address. To reduce this problem, could you
please change that setting to "Discard" at your earliest convenience?

If you fail to do so, your list will continue to be a reflector that
spammers can use to deliver mail to innocent third parties. Leaving
the list as-is has the small benefit that nonmembers are immediately
notified that their attempt to post failed, so I suggest that you
modify the listinfo page to reflect the silent failure, and you notify
your list membership of the change.

Your cooperation in helping us to reduce backscatter helps us improve
deliverability. Some IPSs and mail providers penalize sources of
backscatter, which hurts all our lists.


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