Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> A couple things here. I help manage mail.python.org. We do (or at
> least used to) see lots of messages which look like what you describe,
> but coming from abuse@yahoo.com.

Recently Yahoo started enforcing DKIM in a restrictive way that blocks
mailing list traffic to Yahoo subscribers.  I am away from my notes at
the moment so won't try to describe the details further now.  But a
lot of people with Yahoo addresses have been suffering due to their
recent DKIM policy.

> I don't think laziness stops at the gmail.com boundary. ;-)

Agreed!  It was Gmail just recently but people are people everywhere!

> Of perhaps more interest, when I report spam mail sent to a mailing
> list to which I subscribe, Gmail will generally ask if I want to
> unsubscribe to the list as well, or just report the message as spam.

That would be nice if that is how it works.  I know it didn't at one
time but time passes and features are added and that would be a nice
way to do things now.  Hopefully they do.

> If that's a general feature of how Gmail works and not just
> this-feature-is-special-for-Skip, the laziness of the subscriber
> wielding the mouse would be pretty astounding.

Has anyone @gmail.com used that feature recently and are able to
comment if that is how it is done now?  It would be interesting to
know.  Please do not try it with help-gnu-emacs as a test or we will
be in trouble all over again!  But someone who has happened upon the
task naturally with a real spam message from a mailing list would be
the best case for information.

However I think it does not make sense to report spam that came
through a mailing list as spam to the email service provider used to
*read* the mail.  Since that will only block the entire mailing list,
or not.  And one being subscribed to the mailing list is expected to
get mail from it.  The place to report spam on a mailing list is to
the mailing list administrators so that the anti-spam can be improved
there.

I say improved not solved.  Unfortunately there is no complete
solution to spam because it is a people problem, spammers are people,
and being people are very clever.  People will always think of
something new.

But we can hopefully keep spam down to the level where it is not a
serious problem.  For example the gnu.org lists I think have quite a
good level of anti-spam.  Therefore I simply file mail from mailing
lists into my mailbox and don't use any anti-spam on the receving end
of my mailbox for them.  If you do find a spam problem on a gnu.org
list please do make a report of it to mailman AT gnu.org where we can
know about it and look into it.

Bob