Subject: TMDA and working group mailing lists

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:49:08 -0400

It is true that TMDA is not currently installed in front of working 
group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the cut-over 
because we learned about it very late in the process and it is 
quite burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own declaration, is 
not designed to be used in front of mailing lists.

However, even without TMDA, we do have much improved SPAM filtering 
in place.  It should be the case that no mailing list is getting 
more than a few SPAM messages per day.

Is there any list that is getting more than a few, where few is 
less than 10, SPAM messages per day?  If so, let's hear about it 
here but also send a note to "[email-masked]" so it can be 
investigated.

Understand that NSS setup TMDA on a separate server expressly 
because it was burdensome to set it up and maintain it.  We are 
trying very hard to avoid that burden, if we can.  We would like to 
make sure we are doing everything we can to reduce the SPAM burden, 
ideally without TMDA.

It would help to have an understanding of what folks are really 
experiencing.  If we need to find a way to setup some kind of 
global whitelist, supported by TMDA or some other 
challenge-response system, then we'll certainly figure out 
something and get that done.

How has the SPAM problem been for folks over the past 6 weeks or so 
since the cut-over?

Thanks,

Jim

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith \(Keith\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:03:25 +0100

Sorry, but I am unconvinced.

From the end user viewpoint, having to deal with 7 or 8 SPAM messages a
day is still not acceptable, especially when with TMDA we were getting
one a month.

With TMDA in place, I was able to look at the contents of held messages
to check whether they were of relevance to the working group. They
generally were.

Without TMDA I have gone back to discard based solely on title (or the
absence).

So if (as a non-subscriber) you post a message to the SIP list, and you
fail to include a title, or include something like "Hello Friend" in it,
currently it is not going to go through.

Further we have also started getting held messages relating to
conferences which may or may not relate to the scope of the working
group (SIP). As these are from non-members of the list, and sent
automatically, TMDA got rid of those. Now I have to look at these and
see if they have any relevance to the working group, and respond in
accordance with the IETF rules rather than just let TDMA throw them away
unless the sender overcame the TMDA hurdle.

So I definitely support Henrik in all his points earlier today.

I have a job to do, and run the SIP WG, not spend time I do not have to
act as a SPAM filter when this has been proved to work perfectly well
using automatic mechanisms in the past. I could have drafted a
publication request for one of the seven i-ds we currently have ready in
the time I have spent over the last month moderating the SIP list.

Regards

Keith

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of James M Galvin
> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 8:49 PM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: TMDA and working group mailing lists
> 
> It is true that TMDA is not currently installed in front of 
> working group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the 
> cut-over because we learned about it very late in the process 
> and it is quite burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own 
> declaration, is not designed to be used in front of mailing lists.
> 
> However, even without TMDA, we do have much improved SPAM 
> filtering in place.  It should be the case that no mailing 
> list is getting more than a few SPAM messages per day.
> 
> Is there any list that is getting more than a few, where few 
> is less than 10, SPAM messages per day?  If so, let's hear 
> about it here but also send a note to "[email-masked]" 
> so it can be investigated.
> 
> because it was burdensome to set it up and maintain it.  We 
> are trying very hard to avoid that burden, if we can.  We 
> would like to make sure we are doing everything we can to 
> reduce the SPAM burden, ideally without TMDA.
> 
> It would help to have an understanding of what folks are 
> really experiencing.  If we need to find a way to setup some 
> kind of global whitelist, supported by TMDA or some other 
> How has the SPAM problem been for folks over the past 6 weeks 
> or so since the cut-over?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jim
> 
>

---

From: "Dan Wing" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:03:02 -0700

> quite burdensome to set it up. 
...
> make sure we are doing everything we can to reduce the SPAM burden, 

I don't see the need for a separate server.

Today, mailman requires something like this in /etc/aliases for the BEHAVE
mailing list:

  behave:              "|/usr/local/mailman/mail/mailman post behave"

for TMDA, it would require something like:

  behave:              "|/usr/local/tmda behave"

where the 'tmda' command would check if the From is on the whitelist; if it
is, the 'tmda' script would simply pipe the mail to "mailman post behave".  If
it isn't on the whitelist, the From would be challanged.

In previous emails you mentioned the whitelist had something around 40,000
entries, and that it took a long time to check if an address was on it.  In
February, Harald Alvestrand had suggested a Bloom filter
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_filter> as an efficient mechanism to check
if an entry is on the whitelist.  Even if the Bloom filter is wrong (and the
From address isn't on the list), that is okay:  mailman will notice the post
from a non-subscriber.

-d

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:31:28 +0100

> it isn't on the whitelist, the From would be challanged.

Exactly.  Note that this way all the lists will be handled using the same
user config, whitelist and blacklist -- which is exactly what we want,
although it's not the usual TMDA setup.

>>From address isn't on the list), that is okay:  mailman will notice the post

And if TMDA needs a patch to use bloom filters, I'd be happy to provide one,
once we determine that there actually is a performance problem.

	Henrik

---

From: Tom Taylor <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:25:46 -0400

On AVT and Megaco I've certainly seen a huge difference -- just a handful of 
messages rather than dozens a day. We're happy campers, whatever these grumblers 
say.

James M Galvin wrote:
> group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the cut-over because we 
> learned about it very late in the process and it is quite burdensome to 
> set it up.  TMDA, by its own declaration, is not designed to be used in 
> front of mailing lists.
> 
> However, even without TMDA, we do have much improved SPAM filtering in 
> place.  It should be the case that no mailing list is getting more than 
> a few SPAM messages per day.
> 
> Is there any list that is getting more than a few, where few is less 
> than 10, SPAM messages per day?  If so, let's hear about it here but 
> also send a note to "[email-masked]" so it can be investigated.
> 
> Understand that NSS setup TMDA on a separate server expressly because it 
> was burdensome to set it up and maintain it.  We are trying very hard to 
> avoid that burden, if we can.  We would like to make sure we are doing 
> everything we can to reduce the SPAM burden, ideally without TMDA.
> 
> experiencing.  If we need to find a way to setup some kind of global 
> whitelist, supported by TMDA or some other challenge-response system, 
> then we'll certainly figure out something and get that done.
>

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:45:37 -0400

+1 from MBONED.

Marshall

On Mar 20, 2008, at 9:25 PM, Tom Taylor wrote:
> On AVT and Megaco I've certainly seen a huge difference -- just a  
> handful of messages rather than dozens a day. We're happy campers,  
> whatever these grumblers say.
>
> James M Galvin wrote:
>> working group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the cut- 
>> over because we learned about it very late in the process and it  
>> is quite burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own declaration,  
>> is not designed to be used in front of mailing lists.
>> filtering in place.  It should be the case that no mailing list is  
>> getting more than a few SPAM messages per day.
>> trying very hard to avoid that burden, if we can.  We would like  
>> to make sure we are doing everything we can to reduce the SPAM  
>> burden, ideally without TMDA.
>> global whitelist, supported by TMDA or some other challenge- 
>> response system, then we'll certainly figure out something and get  
>> that done.
>> How has the SPAM problem been for folks over the past 6 weeks or  
>> so since the cut-over?
>> Thanks,
>> Jim

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:08:57 -0400

Ditto for IPS, RDDP and IMSS.  I see a few spams a day on
each list, and this is reasonable to cope with.

When the lack of notifications was fixed, I started getting
two copies of each daily email about messages needing moderator
attention.  It would be nice if this went back down to one
email to me per list per day, but that's not high-priority urgent.

Thanks,
--David 

> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Tom Taylor
> Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:26 PM
> To: James M Galvin
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Bulk] TMDA and working group mailing lists
> 
> filtering in

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:19:25 -0500

Just so Jim doesn't have to respond - known issue, in the queue, but lower 
priority than other stuff that's being worked on now. When I reported the 
situation, he asked me to wait a month and then ping him if I was still 
seeing this.

Thanks,

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 9:08 AM
Subject: RE: [Bulk] TMDA and working group mailing lists

Thanks,
--David

---

From: Martin Duerst <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:39:11 +0900

At 05:49 08/03/21, James M Galvin wrote:
>It is true that TMDA is not currently installed in front of working group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the cut-over because we learned about it very late in the process and it is quite burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own declaration, is not designed to be used in front of mailing lists.
>
>However, even without TMDA, we do have much improved SPAM filtering in place.  It should be the case that no mailing list is getting more than a few SPAM messages per day.
>
>Is there any list that is getting more than a few, where few is less than 10, SPAM messages per day?  If so, let's hear about it here but also send a note to "[email-masked]" so it can be investigated.

I very much agree with others that 'a few, less than 10' SPAM messages
is still too much. Every SPAM message is too much. On the LTRU mailing
list, with TMDA, we had virtually none (I'd say not even one a month).
Now it's several a day, about a 100-fold increase. Even spending a minute
or two, when multiplied with the number of days in the year, and the
number of mailing lists we have, is too much.

>Understand that NSS setup TMDA on a separate server expressly because it was burdensome to set it up and maintain it.  We are trying very hard to avoid that burden, if we can.  We would like to make sure we are doing everything we can to reduce the SPAM burden, ideally without TMDA.

I'm not sure about TMDA overall, but the checking of a 40'000 or so
whitelist can be done in milliseconds, if not less, with a couple
MB of memory, with a simple hash as it is available in numerous
libraries and any modern programming language. No need at all for
anything fancy such as Bloom filters.

Regards,   Martin.

>It would help to have an understanding of what folks are really experiencing.  If we need to find a way to setup some kind of global whitelist, supported by TMDA or some other challenge-response system, then we'll certainly figure out something and get that done.
>
>How has the SPAM problem been for folks over the past 6 weeks or so since the cut-over?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Jim
>

#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Adam Roach <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:42:51 -0500

I second Keith's sentiments on the topic. Yes, the spam filters are 
impressive; and, yes, we're getting only a handful of spam messages a 
day (compared to the uncountably large torrent before TMDA wend in the 
first time) -- but it still requires touching the spam queue once a day 
(or three days on the outside), lest the problem get out of hand.

With TMDA, the queue would remain empty for weeks at a time. There was 
nothing to go in and mess with.

Without TMDA, we're left going in and touching the queue on the order of 
daily.

I have job duties beyond IETF participation. The amount of time that I 
can devote to IETF work is limited by the time I must spend on assigned 
projects internal to the company. Like any limited resource, I must 
choose how to spend this time wisely. I can justify the time spent 
chairing a group and participating in technical discussions. I cannot 
justify time spent acting as a human spam filter.

To be clearer: if you force me to choose between doing real IETF work 
and a wasting my time on a daily spam sifting, I'm going to go back to 
doing the real work -- just like I did before TMDA was turned on the 
first time (i.e., by ignoring quarantined messages and auto-discarding 
the several-times-a-day pestergrams).

/a

---

From: JP Vasseur <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:59:12 -0400

Hi Jim,

It is indeed on the order of a few per day * 30 days/month * ... It is still
quite a bit of work to clean-up as opposed to pretty much none with TDMA
though.

Thanks.

JP.

> From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:49:08 -0400
> To: <[email-masked]>

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:23:53 -0400

On 20 Mar 2008, at 16:49 , James M Galvin wrote:

> because we learned about it very late in the process and it is quite  
> burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own declaration, is not  
> designed to be used in front of mailing lists.

 From a user perspective, TMDA is a useful and excellent tool.

 From a system administration perspective, I hear that it can be a  
little cumbersome, especially when installed in front of large lists.

However, there's an additional perspective that I don't think has been  
mentioned (this time) -- that of people who have no knowledge of or  
interest in the IETF, but whose e-mail addresses are being used to  
distribute (people who are being "joe jobbed"). This seems to be an  
increasingly common way for junk mail to be distributed, perhaps as a  
by-product of the amount of spam that is injected in distributed  
fashion using botnets rather than in bulk from a smaller number of  
sources.

When TMDA sends a challenge to such addresses, it is contributing to  
the problem of unsolicited junk mail, not reducing it, from the  
perspective of those third parties whose addresses were used to  
originate spam.

I have seen how TMDA is an expeditious and effective tool from the  
perspective of a list moderator. I think we should be concerned that  
we're not simply shifting the burden of dealing with the spam on to  
otherwise uninvolved third parties.

Popping over to the mailman moderator interface and dealing with  
50-100 junk messages per day is not an unreasonable burden, in my  
opinion. I also suspect that for most lists the workload would be much  
lower than that (and lower still if we can arrange for "everybody who  
is subscribed to any IETF list at all" to be allowed to post without  
moderation on every IETF list).

Joe

---

From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:57:09 -0400

Joe Abley wrote:
>> group mailing lists.  It was not done as part of the cut-over because 
>> we learned about it very late in the process and it is quite 
> by-product of the amount of spam that is injected in distributed fashion 
> using botnets rather than in bulk from a smaller number of sources.
> 
> When TMDA sends a challenge to such addresses, it is contributing to the 
> problem of unsolicited junk mail, not reducing it, from the perspective 
> of those third parties whose addresses were used to originate spam.
> 
> Popping over to the mailman moderator interface and dealing with 50-100 
> junk messages per day is not an unreasonable burden, in my opinion. I 
> also suspect that for most lists the workload would be much lower than 
> that (and lower still if we can arrange for "everybody who is subscribed 
> to any IETF list at all" to be allowed to post without moderation on 
> every IETF list).

I do see one problem with the "whitelist everybody who is subscribed to 
any IETF list at all".  I am the co-chair of the ipv6 WG and we had to 
turn the moderate flag on my subscription to the mailing list.  It seems 
my e-mail was harvested (most likely off the charter page) and has been 
used to send spam to the ipv6 mailing list (also conveniently listed on 
the charter page).  If we found a way to whitelist everyone who has 
posted to an IETF mailing list, we may end up seeing more spam if the 
harvesters are correlating addresses found on web pages.  It would seem 
that we need more than just whitelisting to protect the lists and reduce 
the workload for list admins.

Regards,
Brian

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:04:51 -0500

On Mar 24, 2008, at 9:57 AM, Brian Haberman wrote:
>
> I do see one problem with the "whitelist everybody who is subscribed  
> to any IETF list at all".  I am the co-chair of the ipv6 WG and we  
> had to turn the moderate flag on my subscription to the mailing  
> list.  It seems my e-mail was harvested (most likely off the charter  
> page) and has been used to send spam to the ipv6 mailing list (also  
> conveniently listed on the charter page).  If we found a way to  
> whitelist everyone who has posted to an IETF mailing list, we may  
> end up seeing more spam if the harvesters are correlating addresses  
> found on web pages.  It would seem that we need more than just  
> whitelisting to protect the lists and reduce the workload for list  
> admins.

"The Answer" according to our generally recommended technology would  
seem to be  for everyone that participates in IETF to have a  
certificate, register that certificate with the IETF, and sign every  
message sent to an IETF list. One variant on that is IETF to act as a  
CA and issue those certificates.

The fact that many of the IETF participants feel this approach is  
unworkable might well tell us that the technology we're purporting to  
require in all our specifications is also unworkable, and we should be  
doing something else.

If not even the IETF can make the IETF's recommendations work, what  
good are those recommendations to the real world?

--
Dean

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:08:30 -0400

On 24 Mar 2008, at 12:04 , Dean Willis wrote:

> message sent to an IETF list. One variant on that is IETF to act as  
> a CA and issue those certificates.

If the problem is "verify that the indicated from address really does  
correspond to the sender" then I thought the IETF answer was DKIM. But  
your basic point is well-made.

> unworkable might well tell us that the technology we're purporting  
> to require in all our specifications is also unworkable, and we  
> should be doing something else.
>

If IPv6 experiments at meetings are considered worthwhile (and by the  
measure of fire vs. ice on the ietf list, they seem to me to be), then  
it seems to me that DKIM experiments on working group mailing lists  
also ought to be worth considering.

Joe

---

From: "Brian Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:23:18 -0400

>also ought to be worth considering.

That implies participants getting their enterprise or personal mailer
servers to implement DKIM; not just a secretariat & laptop configuration
issue.  Wouldn't really help this problem unless everyone did it.  Still,
sounds like something worth asking for.

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:26:21 -0400

> sounds like something worth asking for.

If people knew that signing their outbound mails using the DKIM  
procedures would make it possible for them to send mail to any IETF  
list without any moderator latency, that might be reason enough for  
some people to try it (and hence give an experiment an opportunity to  
gain some results).

I wasn't suggesting that we should *require* DKIM support as a  
prerequisite to participation.

Joe

---

From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:27:14 -0400

> your basic point is well-made.

If what I read about DKIM is correct and I can sign my messages within 
my mail client, that would work.  Another approach that appears to be 
available is a PGP patch to mailman that does validation 
(http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2005-July/018153.html). 

> it seems to me that DKIM experiments on working group mailing lists also 
> ought to be worth considering.

So if a DKIM experiment were carried out and proved successful, then the 
solution is DKIM for validation and TMDA for cross-posting?

While two of my mailing lists are hosted at ietf.org, a third one is 
not.  What requirements would be levied on them to perform these functions?

Regards,
Brian

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 11:52:25 -0500

> sounds like something worth asking for.

It might be possible for IETF to offer email address services to  
participants, much as IEEE does. This might include an inbound aliaser  
and an outbound SMTP submission server that has DKIM support. While  
not everyone would use such a service, it might suffice for those who  
can't get DKIM at home.

 From a sysadmin perspective this is a heck of a lot easier than  
running a CA and issuing individual certificates for the participants.

--
Dean

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:20:15 -0500

> and an outbound SMTP submission server that has DKIM support. While  not 
> everyone would use such a service, it might suffice for those who  can't 
> get DKIM at home.
>
> From a sysadmin perspective this is a heck of a lot easier than  running a 
> CA and issuing individual certificates for the participants.

Dean's suggestion is that we don't need to boil the entire ocean, just one 
smaller body of water, and since we've boiled water before, this seems 
helpful.

If I have one e-mail address that does DKIM (at IETF), I could get more 
excited about getting DKIM set up for other e-mail addresses as well.

There's a pretty serious network effect here - if almost no one else at IETF 
is using DKIM, the value of upgrading MY mail infrastructure is pretty low, 
but if almost everyone else is using DKIM (hosted at IETF), the value is 
higher.

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:44:56 -0400

Joe,

> opinion.

You're entitled to your opinion, but you're still wrong ;-).

Prior to TMDA I had this issue in triplicate for the 3 IETF lists
that I manage, and it was becoming an unacceptable burden for me.

For anyone who's tempted to respond that I shouldn't be managing 3
IETF lists, such a response concedes the point - absence of TMDA is
a burden on IETF participation by some of our most talented
contributors, as those are the people we want as WG chairs.

> I also suspect that for most lists the workload would be much  

> moderation on every IETF list).

That's the current state - I'm seeing a few/day/list and can cope
provided it stays at that level.  As noted previously by another
chair, any time I spend on spam deletion is not spent on doing
useful IETF work.

Thanks,
--David
----------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Distinguished Engineer
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 293-7953             FAX: +1 (508) 293-7786
[email-masked]        Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
----------------------------------------------------

---

From: "Richard Shockey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:05:39 -0400

IMHO this makes sense .. I'd be more than willing to use a IETF.org email
address. Where can I sign up?

>  From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
>  Behalf Of Spencer Dawkins
>  Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 1:20 PM
>  To: Dean Willis; Brian Rosen
>  Cc: [email-masked]
>  Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists
>  
>  not
>  running a

---

From: James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:17:52 -0400

There are over 200 subscribers on this mailing list and only 10 
people have commented on the TMDA issue.  That's not a lot, even by 
IETF standards.

By my count, 4 people said they wanted TMDA back, 4 people said 
they were coping just fine, and 2 people didn't really say how they 
felt personally.

This is not a call for consensus, per se, all I did was ask for 
folks to comment how the SPAM problem looks to them on their 
mailing list.  Nonetheless, I thought the numbers were interesting 
since they were so evenly split.

Just for completeness, I would not try to "classify" the silent 
majority as either for or against TMDA.  This is a case where the 
silent majority gets to remain "happy" regardless of which choice 
is made.

Clearly zero SPAM is a lot better than a few SPAM.  I think we can 
all agree on that.  TMDA, or any kind of whitelisting or 
challenge-response system, will ensure zero SPAM for all practical 
purposes, so I'm pretty sure folks will want that if given a choice.

You'll be pleased to know that Henrik Levkowetz has been looking at 
a TMDA configuration that may serve our needs.  He's been working 
with Glen Barney (AMS Technical Director) and, if successful, we'll 
be able to install one instance of TMDA and use it for all mailing 
lists, instead of one instance per mailing list.

No promises just yet, this is just an update, but if it can be made 
to work I'm sure Henrik and Glen will figure it out.

In the meantime, if anybody else wants to comment on what the SPAM 
problem has looked like to them over the past 6 weeks I'm still 
interested.  You can comment to me directly if you prefer.

Thanks,

Jim

-- On Thursday, March 20, 2008 4:49 PM -0400 James M Galvin 
<[email-masked]> wrote regarding TMDA and working group mailing 
lists --

> cut-over because we learned about it very late in the process and
> it is quite burdensome to set it up.  TMDA, by its own
> filtering in place.  It should be the case that no mailing list
> is getting more than a few SPAM messages per day.
>

---

From: "Brian Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:25:43 -0400

My spam situation is somewhat better than it was before the changeover.  I
get fewer spam moderation requests, but I get these bounce messages I didn't
get before.  Net-net, I have less work to do, and, for me, the level of work
is acceptable.

Even less work is always better, of course.  If TDMA dropped my work from
once or twice a day moderation, and 5-15 emails a day to near zero, better.

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of James M Galvin
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 4:18 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists

Thanks,

Jim

---

From: "Ross Callon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:45:51 -0400

Just my personal opinion (as one of the formerly silent majority):  To
me, Spam on email lists is a major problem. Amongst other things, this
makes me very quick to hit "delete" when I get an email that I don't
need to urgently reply to (since even the ones that need a reply are
hard to keep up with). 

My eagerness to hit "delete" has up to now kept me from paying attention
to this particular discussion, but I would prefer whatever steps can
reasonably be done to reduce spam. 

Ross

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
James M Galvin
Sent: 25 March 2008 16:18
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists

Thanks,

Jim

---

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:01:17 -0400

Hi,

I'll comment.

On the sylog WG mailling list, when TMDA was initially started, it
significantly reduced the load I saw daily (from 10-15 to 2, IIRC).
After a while, the load increased again to 10-15/day. I assume that
for some reason TMDA was no longer being applied to our list. Recent
activity has been limited to about 3 messages a day, which I find
tolerable.

The syslog WG has gone quiet since we have finished most of our work,
so maybe spammers decided there were not enough people listening to
our list to bother. ;-)

dbh

---

From: Al Morton <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 17:19:24 -0400

At 04:17 PM 3/25/2008, James M Galvin wrote:
>...In the meantime, if anybody else wants to comment on what the 
>SPAM problem has looked like to them over the past 6 weeks I'm still 
>interested.

I can survive 2 or 3 msg queued/day without TMDA,
and support the restoration of TMDA for those that want it.
Al

---

From: Menachem Dodge <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:17:20 +0200

With TMDA installed the Adslmib WG mailing list received no spam
messages.

Now we receive about 3 a day. So I would prefer to have it back.

Thanks,
Menachem

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of James M Galvin
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 10:18 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: TMDA and working group mailing lists

Thanks,

Jim

---

From: Magnus Westerlund <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:14:58 +0100

Hi,

I would like to get TMDA back. It was great and dropped the SPAM count 
to <5 a month on the lists I moderated. I also get the impression that 
it helped when cross posting. This as moderators where quicker to 
release the real emails as most notifications where for real messages 
rather than SPAM.

I am currently running on a 3-5 SPAMs per day on each list, which I find 
tolerable, but I would like to get TMDA back to avoid this work also.

Cheers

Magnus

James M Galvin skrev:
> There are over 200 subscribers on this mailing list and only 10 people 
> have commented on the TMDA issue.  That's not a lot, even by IETF 
> standards.
> 
> By my count, 4 people said they wanted TMDA back, 4 people said they 
> were coping just fine, and 2 people didn't really say how they felt 
> personally.
> 
> This is not a call for consensus, per se, all I did was ask for folks to 
> comment how the SPAM problem looks to them on their mailing list.  
> Nonetheless, I thought the numbers were interesting since they were so 
> evenly split.
> 
> Just for completeness, I would not try to "classify" the silent majority 
> as either for or against TMDA.  This is a case where the silent majority 
> gets to remain "happy" regardless of which choice is made.
> 
> Clearly zero SPAM is a lot better than a few SPAM.  I think we can all 
> agree on that.  TMDA, or any kind of whitelisting or challenge-response 
> system, will ensure zero SPAM for all practical purposes, so I'm pretty 
> sure folks will want that if given a choice.
> 
> You'll be pleased to know that Henrik Levkowetz has been looking at a 
> TMDA configuration that may serve our needs.  He's been working with 
> Glen Barney (AMS Technical Director) and, if successful, we'll be able 
> to install one instance of TMDA and use it for all mailing lists, 
> instead of one instance per mailing list.
> 
> No promises just yet, this is just an update, but if it can be made to 
> work I'm sure Henrik and Glen will figure it out.
> 

-- 

Magnus Westerlund

IETF Transport Area Director & TSVWG Chair
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Multimedia Technologies, Ericsson Research EAB/TVM
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ericsson AB                | Phone +46 8 4048287
Torshamsgatan 23           | Fax   +46 8 7575550
S-164 80 Stockholm, Sweden | mailto: [email-masked]
----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:44:52 +0100

> release the real emails as most notifications where for real messages 
+1
> tolerable, but I would like to get TMDA back to avoid this work also.

you are lucky, I get way more than that

/Loa
>> This is not a call for consensus, per se, all I did was ask for folks 
>> to comment how the SPAM problem looks to them on their mailing list.  
>> silent majority gets to remain "happy" regardless of which choice is 
>> made.
>>
>> agree on that.  TMDA, or any kind of whitelisting or 

-- 
Loa Andersson

Principal Networking Architect
Acreo AB                           phone:  +46 8 632 77 14
Isafjordsgatan 22                  mobile: +46 739 81 21 64
Kista, Sweden                      email:  [email-masked]
                                            [email-masked]

---

From: Ignacio Goyret <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:09:18 -0700

Before TMDA, l2tpext got many spams per day. I don't have the precise
numbers as I didn't keep track. Typically, I would remove them once or
twice a week (to keep the wasted time low). In several occasions, the
mailman page took too long to load and the only solution was "delete all"
and hope for the best.

Then, we had TMDA (at the request of my co-chair) and It Was Good (TM).
The planets aligned and there was peace.

Then, we lost TMDA and we are back to wasting time that could be
used for something more productive.

Please, bring TMDA (or something similar) back.
-Ignacio

At 04:17 PM 3/25/2008 -0400, James M Galvin wrote:
>There are over 200 subscribers on this mailing list and only 10 people have commented on the TMDA issue.  That's not a lot, even by IETF standards.
>
>By my count, 4 people said they wanted TMDA back, 4 people said they were coping just fine, and 2 people didn't really say how they felt personally.

---

From: John G. Scudder <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:24:23 -0400

> were coping just fine, and 2 people didn't really say how they felt  

My life was better with TMDA, for the same reasons others have  
expressed -- zero spams per day is distinctly better than ones of  
spams per day that I now have to manually reject from the list I manage.

Also, while TMDA was in effect, I used to get approximately no spam  
from the various IETF lists to which I subscribe.  Now that it's gone,  
I'm back to getting some.  The other spam filtering is reasonably  
effective, but considering that so is the spam filtering on my other  
sources of mail, that ends up meaning that something like 1/4 to 1/2  
of my received spam comes from IETF mailing lists once again.  I liked  
it better when it was much closer to 0%.

I'd like to see TMDA brought back.

> 50-100 junk messages per day is not an unreasonable burden, in my  

Well, you're welcome to moderate my list!  If 50-100 is OK, then  
55-105 should be OK too...

--John

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:48:24 -0500

> lists, instead of one instance per mailing list.

That would be way cool!

--
Dean

---

From: Tony Tauber <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:54:19 -0700

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 05:24:23PM -0400, John G. Scudder wrote:
> My life was better with TMDA, for the same reasons others have expressed 
> -- zero spams per day is distinctly better than ones of spams per day 
> that I now have to manually reject from the list I manage.

John's statements here mirror my sentiments.

> I'd like to see TMDA brought back.

Yes.

Tony

---

From: JP Vasseur <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 12:04:17 -0400

> From: Tony Tauber <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:54:19 -0700
> To: "John G. Scudder" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>

Same here.

JP.

---

From: Rob Austein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:22:55 -0400

> interested.  You can comment to me directly if you prefer.

FWIW: 40 "uncaught bounce notification" messages in my mail this
morning from the DNSOP WG list.  As you can imagine, this puts all
such messages in the delete-before-reading category.

As a practical matter I ignore most everything mailman says to me, and
perform list maintenance only when Ronan's mailman.pl tool tells me
there's something in the queue that might -not- be spam.