[R-390] OT: SORBS

[2002tii]

> SORBS is an acronym for something. It is also the name of a group
> of highwaymen that have set out on the holy quest to rid the internet
> of spam.

I'm sorry to be so dense, but I don't understand how SORBS affects qth.net.

Or maybe I do:  SORBS distributes a list of "bad" addresses and/or domains,
and individuals and/or ISPs load SORBS's list into their spam filters.  (It
would have to be the ISP to generate a bounce message, wouldn't it?)
Unfortunately, qth.net goes against the grain for typical listprocs and
shows the poster's address as both the "From:" and the "Reply-To:"
addresses, instead of using the listpost address and moving the poster's
address to another header ("Original-Sender:" or something).  (This is
doubly unfortunate -- it means most e-mail clients will address follow-up
posts to the original poster if you hit "Reply"; if you want to post to the
list, you have to paste in the listpost address.)  Anyway, some list
members (or more likely, their ISPs) use the SORB list.  When a list member
whose domain is blacklisted posts a message, it generates a bounce message
from every SORB-enabled recipient, which goes back to the poster, not to
the listpost address, because that is what the "From:" field contains.

Anywhere close?  If so, the cure would be to reconfigure the qth.net
listproc to put the listpost address in the "From:" and "Reply-To" headers.
Presumably, the listproc checks the "From:" address of incoming posts and
will only let members post, so the bounce messages would be harmlessly
discarded, not posted to the list.

> This goes back to the days when some ISPs were open gateways for spam,
> like GTE. Now, the only spam that gets through an ISP is from somebody
> who signed up with the ISP and agreed not to spam, but didn't mean it.

Would that this were true!  There are still zillions of open servers on the
net, they're just harder to find these days.


Don Charles