ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:

Hi,

Suppose Mr. X, owner of foobarpunks mailing list, wants to kick out Mr. Y, for his obnoxious letters to the mailing list.

Mr. X, however, is concerned that Mr. Y would subscribe through some proxy address and would continue replying to messages to foobarpunks.

It is assumed that the only person out of the whole universe, Mr. Y, cannot be trusted. The problem is that X does not know which of the subscribers is Mr. Y.

The question is, is there a technical way to disable Mr. Y from reading the list, or detect which subscription address is a proxy for Y?

The answer is no. Plenty of sites gate mailing lists to local newsgroups, and allow open or relatively open NNTP access. It's also silly to assume every other person in the universe is trustworthy. If Mr. Y sends lots of obnoxious mail to a mailing list or news group, the proper thing to do is to put Mr. Y in your killfile and encourage others to do so. That way you don't get bothered by his annoying messages, and if enough people follow suit, people stop responding to Mr. Y's messages. This can be even be extended to cover anonymous posts using NoCeM-like systems. If you try to boot Mr. Y off the mailing list using technical means, several bad things will happen: First of all you will fail, which will give Mr. Y a great deal of satisfaction. Second of all, you will drive Mr. Y to start posting under different names, making him considerably harder to killfile. Third of all, you will double the traffic on the mailing list by starting flamewars about whether this failed booting attempt was ethical, legal, intelligent, homosexual, scatological, or just plain useless. Since at this point tons of people will be replying to threads, a killfile becomes even harder to manage. So don't look for convoluted technical solutions to Mr. Y's personality problems. Just use a little basic common sense. If you don't like the way someone behaves on a mailing list, just ignore the damn person. Anything else is just going to make matters worse, as recent history clearly demonstrates.

On Mon, 25 Nov 1996, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote:

ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home) writes:

...

Hi,

Suppose Mr. X, owner of foobarpunks mailing list, wants to kick out Mr. Y, for his obnoxious letters to the mailing list.

Mr. X, however, is concerned that Mr. Y would subscribe through some proxy address and would continue replying to messages to foobarpunks.

It is assumed that the only person out of the whole universe, Mr. Y, cannot be trusted. The problem is that X does not know which of the subscribers is Mr. Y.

The question is, is there a technical way to disable Mr. Y from reading the list, or detect which subscription address is a proxy for Y?

The answer is no. Plenty of sites gate mailing lists to local newsgroups, and allow open or relatively open NNTP access. It's also silly to assume every other person in the universe is trustworthy.

Process of elimination. If the document that goes to a newsgroup is document #5, then you can concentrate on the path after #5. Which newsgroup is it? Easily determined by selectively seeding documents to different newsgroups. You get the idea. Message pools complicate the process, but are not impossible to deal with, particularly when output to the newsgroup can be controled, as it can here, either by killing the feed the the group, or to the party posting there. This all of course begs the question as to whether this is even a good idea, you address it below:

If Mr. Y sends lots of obnoxious mail to a mailing list or news group, the proper thing to do is to put Mr. Y in your killfile and encourage others to do so. That way you don't get bothered by his annoying messages, and if enough people follow suit, people stop responding to Mr. Y's messages. This can be even be extended to cover anonymous posts using NoCeM-like systems.

Agreed. But not because it is technically impossible.

If you try to boot Mr. Y off the mailing list using technical means, several bad things will happen: First of all you will fail, which will give Mr. Y a great deal of satisfaction. Second of all, you will drive Mr. Y to start posting under different names, making him considerably harder to killfile.

Not really. Simply continue to seed and watch new subscriptions to the list. That narrows down the leak quite well. Same thing as winding up agent nets that use dead-drops. Identigy one step at a time.

Third of all, you will double the traffic on the mailing list by starting flamewars about whether this failed booting attempt was ethical, legal, intelligent, homosexual, scatological, or just plain useless. Since at this point tons of people will be replying to threads, a killfile becomes even harder to manage.

Agreed.

So don't look for convoluted technical solutions to Mr. Y's personality problems. Just use a little basic common sense. If you don't like the way someone behaves on a mailing list, just ignore the damn person. Anything else is just going to make matters worse, as recent history clearly demonstrates.

Mostly agreed. -- Forward complaints to : European Association of Envelope Manufactures Finger for Public Key Gutenbergstrasse 21;Postfach;CH-3001;Bern Vote Monarchist Switzerland