[lug] BLUG Mailing List information you need to know.

[Sean Reifschneider]

The BLUG mailing list and web server has been switched over to a new
machine.  The big thing that you need to know is that we are now using
greylisting and SPF.  What this means to you, the BLUG member:

   If you are sending e-mail using an envelope sender address which is
   in a domain publishing an SPF record, your mail has to come from an
   IP address which your domain owner specifies as being valid for the
   sending of e-mail from that domain.  This may mean that you have to
   push your mail through the domain owner's SMTP servers instead of
   sending it directly out.  If you are sending from an IP that your
   domain owner doesn't list as approved, you will get a bounce message.
   In that case, you should talk to your domain owner about how to fix
   this problem.

   Your posts to the list may be delayed up to an hour before coming
   through.  I won't go into the details of greylisting, because they're
   available on the web.  However, what happens is that the first time
   you send mail to the list from a particular envelope and IP address,
   your e-mail will be blocked.  The next time, more than 10 minutes
   later, that your e-mail server tries to push the mail through, it
   will go.  If your mail server only tries once an hour, this means
   that your messages will be delayed an hour.

   If you regularly send to the list from the same IP and the same
   sender address, only the first message will get delayed.  If you
   regularly switch your IP address and/or sender address, your mail
   will regularly have to go through the greylist.

We are also implementing some other things to help cut down on the spam.
These include things like enforcing that the sender address be in a
valid domain, checking the HELO line, checking Subject and From lines
for things that look like "virus reports", and other tests.

Some of these things may be a bit drastic.  However, we really do live
in drastic times, IMHO.  E-mail systems are under attack from spammers,
anything that's permissive is taken advantage of.  Therefore, we need to
become much less permissive.

Hopefully this will result in more responsive moderation of lists,
because the new system should be much easier, in many ways, for list
moderators to deal with.

Sean
-- 
 If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to
 understand it.  -- Emerson Pugh
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995.  Qmail, Python, SysAdmin