List Status

[Greg Newby]

On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 01:10:50PM -0400, Karl wrote:
> On 5/25/21, Greg Newby <gbnewby at pglaf.org> wrote:
> > Hi, Karl. The list was a bit quiet yesterday. Perhaps cpunks were outside in
> > the Big Blue, or otherwise engaged. I sent a note that you should have
> > received.
> 
> I found it (but never received it):
> https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2021-May/087696.html
> 
> Guess it's an issue with me receiving things via gmail.

The Gmail filter that Tom suggested might help.

As mentioned, I can try to diagnose messages that don't go through, but it's tough to do unless I know the specific message in question, and when it's sent. This is because we get around 1M lines/day in the mail log, invariably including multiple similar messages to the cypherpunks subscriber list.

Yes, I realize it's hard to know when a message does NOT arrive, unless you are watching the archive at the same time as you are watching your inbox.

More:

> > On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 12:11:26PM -0400, Karl wrote:
> >> Hey Greg,
> >>
> >> Can you confirm that people _subscribed_ to the list experience a spam
> >> filter now?  I thought my emails were getting spammed due to not being
> >> subscribed, but it turns out this address is, actually, subscribed; I
> >> was told this when I attempted subscribing.
> >
> > Yes, there are a few standard spam filters and related mechanisms on the
> > server. This includes Spamassassin, DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. These have been in
> > place since the list moved to pglaf.org a few years ago.
> 
> When you said "Any subscriber email address can post anything" at
> https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2021-May/087482.html I
> thought you meant that there as no spam filtering of subscribed posts.
> I infer I misunderstood.

I over-generalized. It's true if the spam filtering doesn't reject it, or another failure condition, like temporary network outages. Or exceeding the max message size (I think it's 20M).

What I really meant not "can post" but "is permitted to post." Or, "is not restricted from posting based on topic etc." More simply stated, there's no moderation of list traffic, other than the types of automation that Mailman (the list manager software), Postfix (the message transfer agent) or related elements of the email stack apply.

> My perception of cypherpunks has been of a list where no posts are
> censored, it being up to the users to filter their mails.  Do you have
> a memory of this?

Sure (I've been on the list since the year 2000 or so). One way this used to be handled was with remailers. Some remailers were completely unfiltered - for example, they would accept random SMTP connections to port 25 and not do any checks that the email headers were valid or accurate.

John Gilmore's toad.com was canonical for this, but not the only member of the remailer circle. Subscribers would choose a remailer to subscribe to. In addition to choosing a level of comfort for spam and some noisier subscribers, the remailer system made cypherpunks more resistant to state-level shutdowns. (It didn't make it less susceptible to surveillance, particullarly, and it also made the whole system more prone to various problems like delivery failure and message loops.)

There were other remailers that had different procedures (i.e., stricter), which translated into less spam (in the "unsolicited commercial email" sense). For awhile, there was at least one moderated remailer where a human tried to only let the "good" stuff through. 

Today, the cypherpunks list doesn't have anyone doing censorship. However, it does use a set of standard mechanisms for limiting abuse. I already mentioned Spamassassin (one of many, many spam filters), and the trio of standards: DMARC, DKIM and SPF.

In addition, the server enables TLS and a few other things to make it more difficult to spoof someone else's email address (i.e., to send email as bill.gates at microsoft.com or somesuch; or email the cypherpunks list claiming to be a subscriber -- a common way, in olden times, of sending spam or of impersonating someone else).

A less restricted remailer is definitely still possible, and could interoperate alongside the current system, just like remailers used to interoperate. Someone (not me) would need to set that up.

> > I have not observed any messages from you that were flagged as spam or
> > rejected.
> 
> Do you receive this link to a message of mine that was rejected?
> https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2021-May/087594.html

Dunno - I don't keep copies of most individual messages to the list.

> > If you are seeing other people's messages in the list archive, but not
> > getting them in your inbox, the first thing to check is your Gmail Spam
> > folder. If messages still don't arrive within a few minutes, send me details
> > and I can check the server logs to see whether delivery was attempted and
> > what happened.
> 
> I have my spam filter configured to prevent all cpunks list messages
> from being spammed, so it's something else.  Maybe routing delay.

Cool.
  Greg