The pet supermarket relay?

[Michael Wiktowy]

On 3/25/06, Daniel B. Thurman <dant at cdkkt.com> wrote:

> I see you are blowing a gasket here :-)  All I am saying is that by my
> OBSERVATION I simply note that I get the pet supermarket emails when I
> post email to the fedora user's list.  I send mail everywhere else and
> I do not have Pet supermart mail replies sent to me.  Where the problem
> ORIGINATES I have NO IDEA nor did I offer to think where it might be.
>
> Yes, I can block messages from Pet Supermarket so that is not a problem
> for me.
>
> Kind regards,
> Dan


I think everyone is annoyed at this problem and that raises the level of
frustration all around.
The problem is well known but tricky to track down.
To summarize:
- Someone has subscribed to the fedora-list using one email address.
- They have that email address automatically forwarding all their mail to
another address at uol.com.br.
- uol.com.br has a dumb challange-based spam filter that strips out any
tracking info out of its replies.

The consequence:
- Every person that emails to fedora-list wil get an echo email back from
uol.com.br's spambot

The solution:
1. everyone filters the spambot replies into the trash at their end
   - an easy solution that everyone has to take part in but is permanent
2. the list administrator goes though each email address one by one sending
dummy verification emails to try and trigger the spambot and then delete
that subscriber
   - a harder solution that only the list administrator has to do but has to
be repeated every time someone decides to play this trick
3. the list administrator triggers a real verification email to cull the
dead addresses
   - everyone has to be involved on a regular basis to do whatever
verification is needed to prove they are not a spambot or a dead address ...
usually requires clicking on a link ... has the potential of unintentionally
booting people off the list that were not paying attention.
4. everyone contacts the admin at uol.com.br to try to convince them to stop
doing this for known mailing lists
   - problem is not everyone knows Portugese and several attempts at this
have gotten no response

So solution 1. is the most convenient way to go at this point,
unfortunately.

/Mike
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