Re: address@hidden: Please remove me from your address@hidden or address@hidden mailing lists

[Kaz Kylheku (gnu-misc-discuss)]

On 2020-02-24 17:34, J.B. Nicholson wrote:
> Alexandre François Garreau wrote:
> > It was, and it is not “tolerated”, this is bad faith: it is simply
> > impossible to do anything about that.
>
> gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org list owners could remove ruben@mrbrklyn.com
> from the list and make it clear that he won't be allowed back until he
> has stopped sending unsolicited email to those who don't want it.

It's not that technically simple.

Firstly, certain e-mail addresses have already been harvested.
The proverbial "horse has left the barn". The culprit can manually
re-subscribe those addresses to his mailing list, without any
connection to this mailing list.

With those addresses, he has similar powers to those who peddle
phishing scams or fake Rolex watches.

The existing tools and infrastructure for dealing with that
problem is also appropriate here. What that means is that the
individual targets of the unsolicited messages have to apply
local countermeasures.

The list cannot possibly help with traffic that doesn't
pass through it.

Secondly, removals from mailing lists and other forms of blocking
can be circumvented. There are ways to obtain new network
identifiers such as e-mail addresses, domains and IP addresses.

I've taken care of the problem locally; I don't see those NYLXS
postings any more.  I've done that without intending to filter
out Ruben himself, I think. I can certainly see his
gnu-misc-discuss postings. No sure about direct mail: that depends
on to what extent it is co-located with the mailing list. If
that's sent from the same host, then, oops! That's what you get
for co-locating your mail identity with your spammy mailing list.

> There is something that can be done. Apparently
> gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org owners have chosen to do nothing about it and
> therefore it is fair to say that ruben@mrbrklyn.com's behavior is
> tolerated.

With the way the discussion has heated up, the moderators are
already busy just going through the messages.

As a mere participant who doesn't read everything, this already
sucked up so much of my precious little free time this past
weekend that I didn't write a single line of code.

If the moderators start spending their free time tuning
and debugging main infrastructure components in an escalating
battle of countermeasures against unsolicited mail
(all without being able to put a dent in any of it which doesn't
go through the list), the moderation will either fall behind,
so that complainers will start kvetching about their
posts appearing late, or else decline in quality, so that some
blatant kind communication guideline violations will get through.