[TheForge] TheForge, Mailman, spam and virus's

[Dave Brown]

Given the recent commentary on spam and particularly virus's I thought I'd 
point out how these are dealt with on TheForge.

1. Spammers are finding the address of TheForge.  Occasionally a spam from 
a non-subscriber will show up and MAILMAN will place it on a "hold" and 
notify the List-Admin.  I will not go directly to the list if it comes from 
a non-subscriber.   This is how it is supposed to work..... Spams are just 
deleted by the List-jAdmin and they vanish.  The List-Admin is the only one 
who has to contend with them.  Legitimate posts from non-subscribers are 
also put on "hold" and are generally REJECTED not DELETED as this sends an 
instruction e-mail on why the rejection and how to fix it.   Spams are one 
of the reasons that the posting permission default for TheForge is set so 
that posts MUST only be allowed from list members and all subscribe 
requests are verified by a mail to the subscriber requesting a reply before 
the user is added.

2. There are various viruses that read the address book and incoming mail 
addresses in Outlook and Outlook express mail programs. These virus's then 
mail a forged e-mail to some addresses from some address in an attempt to 
make it look legitimate.  I have seen hundreds if not thousands of these 
faked virus messages. Your only defense against these is a good virus 
checker and being very cautious in opening attachments even if they appear 
to be coming from a source you are aware of.  TheForge list is NOT CAPABLE 
of spreading viruses as we strip every attachment, all HTML code and 
anything else that is not plain ASCII text. Even if a mail claims to be 
from a list it may not be.....the key here is the subject, a valid list 
will have a prefix in the subject (i.e. [TheForge] ) I have not seen that 
faked yet.

That's all for now.

Dave
"Therapy  is expensive. Popping plastic bubble wrap is cheap. You choose"