Spam handling with ASF mailing lists

[Gora Mohanty <go...@mimirtech.com>]

Hi,

There seems to have been a significant spike in spam emails forwarded
to moderators. While the volume is still tractable, what surprises me
is that almost all of these ought to have been caught by automated
spam filters. E.g., a significant fraction of the spam seems to
originate from just a few email addresses. Surely it is possible to
black-list such addresses after they have been marked as spam several
times, and have never had a successful post?

Regards,
Gora

Re: Spam handling with ASF mailing lists

[Gora Mohanty <go...@mimirtech.com>]

> On 23 September 2015 at 21:10, Upayavira <uv...@odoko.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > If you have specific questions about spam handling, then I'd suggest you
> > ask on the ASF infrastructure list, but generally, we can expect that
> > there will be occasions when something that seems obviously spam gets
> > through our systems.
>
> OK, will take this up on the ASF infrastructure list as you suggest.
> Thanks: I was not quite sure where to address this plaint to.
>

Sorry to bug all of you again, but I was annoyed enough once more by the
continuing spam that slips through the cracks to try and complain to ASF
infrastructure lists. Unfortunately, at the very beginning of
http://www.apache.org/dev/infra-mail it says "Participation in these lists
is only available to ASF committers.", and I am not a committer. Would it
be possible for someone to forward this to the infrastructure list?

Not to point fingers, but the spam that I have been responding to would
*not* slip through the open-source-based filters that we maintain for our
small clients. I would think that ASF, with all its resources, would be
able to handle this.

Regards,
Gora

Re: Spam handling with ASF mailing lists

[Gora Mohanty <go...@mimirtech.com>]

On 23 September 2015 at 21:10, Upayavira <uv...@odoko.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015, at 04:34 PM, Gora Mohanty wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> There seems to have been a significant spike in spam emails forwarded
>> to moderators. While the volume is still tractable, what surprises me
>> is that almost all of these ought to have been caught by automated
>> spam filters. E.g., a significant fraction of the spam seems to
>> originate from just a few email addresses. Surely it is possible to
>> black-list such addresses after they have been marked as spam several
>> times, and have never had a successful post?
>
> I think you'll find spam handling is something of an art-form, and an
> ongoing catch-up race. I think you'll also find it horrific how much
> spam ASF infrastructure blocks before it gets to moderators.

Agreed as in spam being an ongoing and maybe never-ending battle, but
as mentioned, these seem obvious fodder for automated spam filters,
and email is still being accepted fro 2-3 weeks from a single email
address. I am pretty sure that spamassassin would catch many of these.

> If you have specific questions about spam handling, then I'd suggest you
> ask on the ASF infrastructure list, but generally, we can expect that
> there will be occasions when something that seems obviously spam gets
> through our systems.

OK, will take this up on the ASF infrastructure list as you suggest.
Thanks: I was not quite sure where to address this plaint to.

Regards,
Gora

Re: Spam handling with ASF mailing lists

[Upayavira <uv...@odoko.co.uk>]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015, at 04:34 PM, Gora Mohanty wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> There seems to have been a significant spike in spam emails forwarded
> to moderators. While the volume is still tractable, what surprises me
> is that almost all of these ought to have been caught by automated
> spam filters. E.g., a significant fraction of the spam seems to
> originate from just a few email addresses. Surely it is possible to
> black-list such addresses after they have been marked as spam several
> times, and have never had a successful post?

I think you'll find spam handling is something of an art-form, and an
ongoing catch-up race. I think you'll also find it horrific how much
spam ASF infrastructure blocks before it gets to moderators.

If you have specific questions about spam handling, then I'd suggest you
ask on the ASF infrastructure list, but generally, we can expect that
there will be occasions when something that seems obviously spam gets
through our systems.

Upayavira