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Reporting backscatter


mrmaxx

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I occasionally receive "backscatter" from moderated lists. I know we are not supposed to report stuff from moderated lists to which we are subscribed, however, I don't know whether or not we are supposed to report "backscatter" from lists to which we are NOT subscribed.

Any admins want to step into this sticky question? :-)

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I occasionally receive "backscatter" from moderated lists. I know we are not supposed to report stuff from moderated lists to which we are subscribed, however, I don't know whether or not we are supposed to report "backscatter" from lists to which we are NOT subscribed.

Not an admin, but please describe exactly how this "back scatter" gets to your account.

Are you talking about spam messages that were sent to a moderated group with your return address, were attempted to be delivered, hit an undeliverable condition and were bounced back to you? In that case I would say yes as the message you are reporting is the server that sent the bounce.

Or do you think your address was added to a moderated list without your approval? Depending on the source of the list, I might try to contact the admin and complain about being added to a list without my knowledge. If the list was allowed to continue, I would then report it.

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Neither of those exact conditions... I'm talking about spam sent to a moderated list with my return address to which I am not subscribed. The automated list management software sees that I'm not subscribed and so it sends me a notice that the moderator will have to approve the message since I'm not a subscriber.

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Neither of those exact conditions... I'm talking about spam sent to a moderated list with my return address to which I am not subscribed. The automated list management software sees that I'm not subscribed and so it sends me a notice that the moderator will have to approve the message since I'm not a subscriber.

I would try to contact the moderator and complain about this, explaining that you are being spammed by this action (the messages are unsolicited and likely bulk as they are being sent to anyone whose address is forged as the sender, depending on the list, thay may also be considered commercial). These are similiar to bounces sent to the forged sender address.

If you get no satisfaction after that, I would indeed report these.

Please note I am not an admin or deputy who makes the decisions on these, however.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I would try to contact the moderator and complain about this, explaining that you are being spammed by this action (the messages are unsolicited and likely bulk as they are being sent to anyone whose address is forged as the sender, depending on the list, thay may also be considered commercial). These are similiar to bounces sent to the forged sender address.

If you get no satisfaction after that, I would indeed report these.

Please note I am not an admin or deputy who makes the decisions on these, however.

Thanks, Steven... and no offense to you, but it kinda bugs me that I can't get an answer from a deputy on this. Methinks it's been quite long enough here... I think I'll go fire off an email to deputies[at]..

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Thanks, Steven... and no offense to you, but it kinda bugs me that I can't get an answer from a deputy on this. Methinks it's been quite long enough here... I think I'll go fire off an email to deputies[at]..

If you were waiting for an official answer, that is the way to go. The deputies are rarely in here, and postings are even rarer.

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I would try to contact the moderator and complain about this, explaining that you are being spammed by this action (the messages are unsolicited and likely bulk as they are being sent to anyone whose address is forged as the sender, depending on the list, thay may also be considered commercial). These are similiar to bounces sent to the forged sender address.

If you get no satisfaction after that, I would indeed report these.

I suppose this is a matter of opinion. Personally, I would NOT report these messages although raising it with the list moderator may be useful. List management would become very difficult if none of the automated functions could be used. In fact I'd suggest if list moderation messages were not available then many very useful lists would cease to exist since a manual intervention would be impossible. This issue is, from my perspective, similar to any other where my Email address is forged. Typically itsubsides within a day or two.

Andrew

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I suppose this is a matter of opinion. Personally, I would NOT report these messages although raising it with the list moderator may be useful. List management would become very difficult if none of the automated functions could be used. In fact I'd suggest if list moderation messages were not available then many very useful lists would cease to exist since a manual intervention would be impossible. This issue is, from my perspective, similar to any other where my Email address is forged. Typically itsubsides within a day or two.

Andrew

...FWIW, my opinion is that it is reportable -- I see no reason that mailing list moderators using automated functions should be exempt from the responsibility of ensuring there is no backscatter. At minimum, only one notice that the moderator will have to approve a message from a non-subscriber should be sent to any given e-mail address.
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...FWIW, my opinion is that it is reportable -- I see no reason that mailing list moderators using automated functions should be exempt from the responsibility of ensuring there is no backscatter. At minimum, only one notice that the moderator will have to approve a message from a non-subscriber should be sent to any given e-mail address.

Well, I got a reply from Deputy Ellen. She said that while it *is* technically reportable, she would prefer that we at least TRY to notify the moderator, and preferably not report moderator messages, even though they are technically reportable. Just thought I'd pass along what they said.

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Well, I got a reply from Deputy Ellen. She said that while it *is* technically reportable, she would prefer that we at least TRY to notify the moderator, and preferably not report moderator messages, even though they are technically reportable. Just thought I'd pass along what they said.
...Thanks for taking the time to contact the deputies and reporting back to us what Ellen replied. Her suggestion seems reasonable provided there's reason to believe the moderator is not totally irresponsible.... :) <g>
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  • 11 months later...

A also got feedback from Ellen on a closely related question - whether it would be a good idea to redirect backscatter to an official spamcop spamtrap or not, so I thought I'd report it here. The gist of her response was that they didn't do much with SUBE that appeared to be backscatter, so I could, but I might as well not bother.

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A also got feedback from Ellen on a closely related question - whether it would be a good idea to redirect backscatter to an official spamcop spamtrap or not, so I thought I'd report it here. The gist of her response was that they didn't do much with SUBE that appeared to be backscatter, so I could, but I might as well not bother.

As so many folks have a problem with the difference between 'forwarding' and 'forwarding as an attachment' .. this casual mention of 'redirection' is sure to get some other enterprising folks into a bind. Bottom line, don't attempt this, as doing anything wrong will then probably lead to 'your' outgoing e-mail server getting itself listed due to these 'innocent spamtrap hits' .....

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  • 1 month later...

As so many folks have a problem with the difference between 'forwarding' and 'forwarding as an attachment' .. this casual mention of 'redirection' is sure to get some other enterprising folks into a bind. Bottom line, don't attempt this, as doing anything wrong will then probably lead to 'your' outgoing e-mail server getting itself listed due to these 'innocent spamtrap hits' .....

Right. Thanks for pointing this out.

In this case, I was NOT talking about one of the usual spamcop ([qu...]YBQWERTYUIASDFy5[at]spam.spamcop.dom) addresses folks use to send in spamcop reports. Forwarding to one of those will indeed NOT work. (Apologies for the belated reply.)

-elvey, not quite just another :ph34r: .

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In this case, I was NOT talking about one of the usual spamcop ([qu...]YBQWERTYUIASDFy5[at]spam.spamcop.dom) addresses folks use to send in spamcop reports. Forwarding to one of those will indeed NOT work. (Apologies for the belated reply.)

I believe we 'were' on the same page. A "spamtrap" address is not the same as a "Reporting Account" address .... and it was the "redireecting to a spamtrap address" that caused me to raise the attention flag ... spamtrap hits rate much higher in the math used to determine a SpamCopDNSBL listing, thus the risk f getting "your" e-mail server listed ....

As far as the actual subject matter, the newsgroup archives alos include a 'mailing list' here .... when originally set up, it alos included the 'Reply' to the )alleged) sender of an attempted post to the newsgroup via the list .... Each one of those was 'answered' by a notification that the list was moderated, would require Admin approval, etc., etc., etc. .... Unfortunately, no one bothered to get excited by those Replies. I believe I dscovered these things going out while checking the logs, looking for something else.

So as it stands now, those responses do not go out .. on the other hand, I've not opened up that channel for newsgroup input anyway. In the year+ since I activated the archives on this server, thus far there have only been two actual attempts at someone trying to do up anything close to legitimate .... the spam attempts just keep rolling in. Assumedly to a dictionary type list of addresses, seeing as how am actual e-mail address is on all of those Archive information pages, but the spam keeps coming to the 'Administrative" addresses .... In general, the spammer uses the same "From" address for two or three spams, then changes that data to send the next batch Definitely a rotten side-effect of tryng to do something 'nice' for other SpamCop.net users .....

Point is .. wondering why none of those Forged-address folks never attempted to make contact about the unsolicited e-mails ..... I suppose it could be that all of them are fictional also, but .... no evidence of bounces from those outgoing e-mails ....

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