Re: Grumble!

[Karim BELABAS <Karim.Belabas@math.u-psud.fr>]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Justin Walker wrote:
> I keep getting these 'qsecretary' intercepts.  Is this new behavior?

No. It's been like this for at least half a year. (Possibly longer, don't
remember.)

> This is a bit much.  If one signs up for a mailing list, I would think that
> would be prima facie evidence that one is not bulk mail (one may be 'bulk',
> but that's a separate issue :-}).  Has anyone discussed this with Dan?

Yes.

The fact is quite a few spam / virii have been sent to the list before this
policy change.

> Is this in direct response to Spam?

Yes. It is not that painful, you just have to reply to the mail. I'm probably
the #1 poster on these lists (or close second:-) and I don't mind.

Bill's procmail recipe is not really a good idea: a spammer can forge an
email that appears to come from you and send it to the list, so that
qsecretary sends you a confirmation request, automatically provided by
procmail. Thereby delivering the spam.

The following package deals with this problem securely:

  http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/pymsgauth/pymsgauth.html

Cheers,

    Karim.
-- 
Karim Belabas                     Tel: (+33) (0)1 69 15 57 48
Dép. de Mathématiques, Bât. 425   Fax: (+33) (0)1 69 15 60 19
Université Paris-Sud              http://www.math.u-psud.fr/~belabas/
F-91405 Orsay (France)            http://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr/  [PARI/GP]