Re: Offlist spam

(writing this with the risk of receiving more emails that I'll have to
delete without my kids seeing)

I've been an infrequent replier to this email group for a while and the
last posting I was surprised how the spam messages came in. My only guess
is that either someone on the list is forwarding the people who reply to a
spam source, which then replies back directly to the user. Or maybe there's
some forwarding service that is scraping email addresses as they are
processed. Either way it's nearly impossible to say which account is the
problem.

Either way, it's a minor inconvenience as the quality value of this email
list is very high compared to other groups I use.

Rob

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 2:52 PM Rick Moen <rick-IyCrq+X4Fdq2oZ/[email protected]> wrote:

> <hat='listadmin'>
> Some folks have sent me private mail expressing concern that, if they
> post to [email protected], lately they receive maybe a dozen spams
> over the following couple of days that look at first glance like mailing
> list replies.
>
> A couple of such folks have charged (in private mail to me) that our
> Mailman is permitting spam _via_ the mailing list.   That is not the
> case.  If you look attentively at the flurry of spams you receive,
> you'll note that it's completely offlist traffic.  I've seen no reason
> to think our mailing list server's being compromised.  The annoying
> trick being used doesn't _need_ server compromise.
>
> You might ask:  Can't I find out who's subscribed (apparently) with the
> sole aim of sending offlist junkmail to persons who're posting?  Answer:
> I've so far found no visible connection between the non-subscribed
> spam-sending entity and any specific subscriber.  (Of course, there are
> also other ways to detect posting activity, such as parsing additions to
> our public archive.)
>
> If anyone wants to shoulder that task and thinks he/she might be better
> at it, go to town.  However, I'll note that making this sort of malicious
> activity functionally impossible to track down on a public mailing list
> is pretty easy.
>
> You might ask:  What's up with this?  My best guess:  It's a clever
> evolution in spammer methods, because in 2018 the Internet's coin of the
> realm is user engagement.  If you barrage with spam a user who has
> provably just sent mail to a public medium, and give it the surface
> appearance of a response within that medium, you make it much more
> likely your Internet noise will rise above the rest of the Internet
> noise hitting the user.  Meanwhile, this is yet another reason to
> dislike suddenly unexplained offlist responses to public threads, and it
> might be wise to make antispam software treat such received mail as
> suspect.
> </hat>
>
>
>
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-- 
Robert Freiberger
510-936-1210

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