Re: Grumble!

[Bill Allombert <allomber@math.u-bordeaux.fr>]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2003 at 07:50:12PM +0100, Karim BELABAS wrote:
> 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.

When you are on dial-up connection, you have to reconnect later to
reply. It is perfectly inconvenient.

> 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.

Don't worry. Here my ~/.bsecretary file:

  Hi. This is B. Allombert's automated mail-handling program. I've
  received a message from you addressed to one of Dr Allombert's
  addresses.
  
  Doctor Allombert has asked me to reply to all requests for automated mail
  programs asking confirmation from mailing to tell them to wait until Dr
  Allombert check the confirmation message.
  
  Sincerely,
  The bsecretary program

When I receive the qsecretary message, I check it came from me,
but I don't need to reply!

> The following package deals with this problem securely:
> 
>   http://www.qcc.ca/~charlesc/software/pymsgauth/pymsgauth.html

Thanks for the pointer, but unfortunately, I cannot use it since it
require to run the MUA and the procmail recipe on the same box, and it
is certainly not my case.

I could GPG sign all my post, but the qsecretary break signatures so
it would be of no use. Probably I could use a one-time-password scheme
but it does not worth the trouble since there are plenty of
auto-answering addresses around (e.g. pari-dev@list.cr.yp.to).

Anyway, I don't see pari-dev as a suitable forum for discussing spam
and qsecretary.

Cheers,
Bill.