[RndTbl] Gmail spam filtering super-aggressive lately

[Hartmut W Sager]

> Argh.  This is why I don't like messing with this stuff :-)
> I prefer to wait for a fire and then put it out.  However,
> gmail spamblocking Alberto is just such a fire...
>
And, my Gmail is spamblocking Sean Cody too.  His last two postings just
now both went to my Gmail spam.

So, now both victims feel "honoured":

> [Alberto Abrao] I ... am honoured ...
> [Sean Cody] I’m sure more lives are enriched by filing anything by me as
spam than otherwise.

Good humour!  And I too now feel honoured to have started one of my 2 or 3
longest ever threads here on MUUG.

Now, to my own further thoughts (while omitting the curses).  I would add
TXT SPF record content that legitimizes as sender any and all relaying
agents, like my own forwarder/fanout, the MUUG mailing list "forwarder",
etc.  And remember, only one "TXT v=spf1" record is allowed, and
DNS-querying parameters (everything besides IP addresses) are limited to a
count of 10.  The parameters are called "mechanisms", by the way.

If my thoughts above aren't sensible, note that I am very weak in knowledge
at this end of e-mail stuff.  My e-mail strength is at the other end, in
configuring the user stuff like SMTP/POP3/IMAP settings, doing
forwarding/fanout, migrating whole mail databases from one system to
another system, and such.  Though I have perused a lot of e-mail headers to
figure out some failures.

Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331


On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 00:32, Trevor Cordes <trevor at tecnopolis.ca> wrote:

> On 2020-04-02 Sean Cody wrote:
> > Ultimately the signed messages get screwed up by the mailing list.
> > The headers make that pretty clear and spamassassin marks the message
> > ‘X-Spam: Yes’ when further below you see another instance validate
> > the original receipt.
>
> X-Spam from the MUUG server says it passes ok.  So you must mean your
> local spamass is marking it as spam.
>
> Mailman should not touch the body, and the headers that are marked
> ("h=") you should be able to configure to ensure they don't include any
> that mailman modify.
>
> Hmm... maybe that means Subject: should be taken out of h=.  The very
> first post to the list will have [RndTbl] prepended.  Subsequent
> replies shouldn't have anything prepended, I don't think.  Thinking
> about it a bit, it shouldn't be the end of the world to remove Subject
> as a checked header.  Ya, it's not ideal, but that only leaves the
> subject for spammers to abuse, still not the body.
>
> I'm 99% positive mailman does not change Date, To, Cc, In-Reply-To
> (seems absent) and (hopefully) References.  Excluding IRT and Refs
> should likewise not cause any grief.
>
> > Would recommend disable the DKIM check in spamassassin on the mailing
> > list or strip DKIM headers before wrapping and relaying the messages
> > to the list.   <https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DKIM>
> > https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DKIM
>
> Like I said, MUUG spamass seems to pass DKIM just fine (on emails from
> all 3 of us).  Your idea about having mailman strip the DKIM headers
> sounds like the better idea, however, some sites (maybe gmail) are
> sticklers for DKIM working properly to avoid getting in spamboxes.
> (Yes, usually one of the methods is enough.)
>
> I can't find a TXT DK record for abrao.net... Mine are all under
> main._domainkey.*, but is "main" user-selectable?  How do the MTAs know
> which TXT record to retrieve?  Is it hidden in the dk header somewhere?
> I'd like to look at Alberto's DK DNS record to see what's going on
> there.
>
> Argh.  This is why I don't like messing with this stuff :-)  I prefer
> to wait for a fire and then put it out.  However, gmail spamblocking
> Alberto is just such a fire...
>
> And Sean is 100% correct that most of these antispam methods are tough
> to jive with mailing lists.  The creators of these things didn't think
> through all the use cases.  And thus we're stuck with 3-4 different
> standards, lots of the (non big-tech) players (like me and Alberto)
> implementing 1 or fewer of them, and tons of real world problems.
>
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