[Biosoap-l] spam, viral email & info needed for the next Open Bio Foundation newsletter

[chris dagdigian]

Hi folks,

Sorry for the mass cross-post. I've got a few quick things to mention:

(1) The quality of our mailing lists has been degraded both by more 
instances of spam getting through our filters and the ocasional viral 
payload sent by Outlook users.

The spam problem has been addressed- We have finally faxed in all of the 
paperwork necessary (11 pages!) for the O|B|F to become a subscriber to 
the combined RBL/RSS/DUL blackhole databases maintained by the folks at 
mail-abuse.net. People interested in what RBL+ is should visit this URL: 
http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl+/

We are going to refuse inbound email from (a) known spammers and spam 
friendly networks, (b) known open relays and (c) IP addresses blocks 
used by ISP dialup customers. Once MAPS processes our info and allows 
our mail server to query the service I think that 99% of the spam will 
go away. This was the case back when the RBL service was free and we 
used it all the time.

The virus problem is going to take longer to fix. Because we are going 
to transition from Linux-on-Alpha to Sun Solaris systems we are going to 
delay the process of purchasing or downloading antivirus scanners that 
hook into sendmail until we are up and running on the new boxes.

Ok. Enough talk about bad stuff...on to the good stuff...

**
It's time for another Open Bioinformatics Foundation Newsletter
**

The first one we wrote back in October was very well recieved and it is 
past time to put out a new issue. I'm soliciting information from the 
various project heads-- write up anything you want about your project 
and get it to me within a week or so for inclusion.

As an example of what we are trying to do, see the 1st newsletter online 
at 
http://open-bio.org/pipermail/open-bioinformatics-foundation/2001-October/000001.html


Regards,
Chris




-- 
Chris Dagdigian, <dag@sonsorol.org>
Life Science IT & Research Computing Freelancer
Office: 617-666-6454, Mobile: 617-877-5498, Fax: 425-699-0193
Yahoo IM: craffi