Hi Bob,

At 2008-05-13 12:00, Bob Paddock wrote:
>On Tuesday 13 May 2008 01:09:59 am Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
>> At 2008-05-13 02:07, Bob Paddock wrote:
>> >On Monday 12 May 2008 02:19:43 pm Syd H. Levine wrote:
>> >> Personally, I would hate to see this list die after so many years.
>> >
>> >I agree, which is why I asked the question rather than just signing off
>> > like I've done to many other lists that have been overcome with spam.
>>
>> Thanks Bob and the others. I'm still here
>
>Glad to hear.
>
>> shut down the PHPBB after it was inundated with spam
>
>I'm not even sure which one your talking about?

I started a BBS (bulletin board system) using the PHPBB2
software about three years ago. We discussed it here.
Quite soon it was starting to receive a lot of 'Russian'
spam and this amount kept growing (and also became more
international). Unfortunately the PHPBB2 software was
quite primitive in dealing with spam. Even removing a
lot of spam or banning people by hand was a lot of work.
For example I would have liked to be able to ban a
spammer and have the system automatically remove all
of the messages of that spammer. The source code is open
but I don't want to start rewriting complex software
like that for such crucial issues.

>I've always preferred mailing lists rather than forums of anykind.
>If I had to check ever forum that I was interested I'd never get
>anything done. Much easier to have the email automatically pushed into my
>inbox that me going out and pulling it from someplace manually.

Yes, I agree, but the latest generations of internet
users probably don't understand what mailing lists are
anymore. Anyway, when you don't try these kind of things
you can't learn from the experience.

>> By the way I'm very annoyed by the current 'Powers That Be'
>> that rather start foreign wars (US) or support it (NL) instead
>> of solving the spam problem.
>
>The Powers are probably profiting by Spam somehow,
>on the otherhand they are so out of touch with normal life
>they probably don't notice it.

Here in Europe spam to civilians is forbidden and is
therefore punishable but it hardly happens. But the main
problem is of course that most of the spam comes from abroad
and a lot of it is being sent from 'hijacked' PC's of private
persons (sometimes with dynamically assigned IP addresses).

Here in the Netherlands we have the spamming by 'serious'
companies quite well under control using the WWW-site:

http://www.spamvrij.nl/ (no longer active, site fully in
Dutch)

and

http://www.opta.nl/asp/en/ (English version)


>> Perhaps I should delete all the accounts of people who don't
>> allow mails from the mailing list?
>
>I assume you mean people that use the web interface?

Yes and some people have two accounts, one for receiving
mail and one for sending messages. (Sometimes a home
and a business account for example).

Greetings,
Jaap