1. main@beta.groups.io
   Date   
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Mark Fletcher
 

On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 9:42 PM, Shal Farley <shals2nd@...> wrote:

I don't think I would go as far as Lena suggests, and moderate them without that being a group option; I'm concerned that few group moderators would have the knowledge to make a safe decision for their group. A choice between "moderate" or "reject" might be useful, with "reject" the default.


Ok, so new group option for dealing with spam: either moderate or reject, with reject being the default. Rejected messages will be logged in the activity log. If I reject a message, should it bounce back to the sender, or should I blackhole it?

If a message in the archives is flagged as having a virus or phishing attack, should I put a banner on the page saying so? (and should I go back through the archives doing scans)?

 
By the way, I assume none of the above applies to the boatloads of absolute junk from invalid sources (malware-infected PCs and the like) that I presume you've been dropping all along. Those deserve the black hole treatment.

The fact that many/most groups don't accept messages from non-subscribers acts as a natural prevention for a lot of this crap. I don't accept smtp connections from IP addresses that don't have reverse DNS records. I use a few blocklists as well, for all connections to the site, not just email. I haven't done anything with SPF and DKIM data yet.

Thanks,
Mark

 
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Marv Waschke
 

On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 09:42 PM, Shal Farley wrote:
I don't think I would go as far as Lena suggests, and moderate them without that being a group option; I'm concerned that few group moderators would have the knowledge to make a safe decision for their group. A choice between "moderate" or "reject" might be useful, with "reject" the default.
Agree with Shal on this. An email reflector like groups.io, is a multiplier-- it turns a single email into many emails. Cybercriminals love this. Send out a malevolent email to a single address and, depending on the size of the group, the poison goes to hundreds or thousands of potential victims. And those victims are predisposed to swallow the poison because it comes from a familiar source that they intentionally subscribed to. Even better if the email spoofs the name of a prominent member. This is a hacker's dream setup. These criminals are not nice people. Give them a chance and they will hurt you.

Rejecting is annoying, but aggressively scrubbing malware from multipliers like groups.io is good policy in my book. Moderators should hesitate and  consider carefully a decision to take the "moderate" option. Letting a malevolent email loose on your group could destroy it. Look at the annoyance of automatic rejection as a price a small price paid for the convenience and pleasure you get from membership in a groups.io group.

Best, Marv
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Shal Farley
 

Mark,

> My default implementation would be to turn it on so that it blocks all
> emails, files and photos that it finds has a virus or phishing
> attempt.
> Do you see any reason to not do it this way?

"Block" = "Drop" or "Reject"?

Drop is a very severe action, and I'm not entirely sure it should be done even with non-subscribers. With subscribers at the least I'd recommend "reject" (and add to the Activity log).

As Jim and some others, I was thinking maybe have a group option to put those from subscribers in the pending queue, prominently marked as containing potentially harmful content. This would serve the small fraction of groups who might be studying such things, or might be sharing harmless executable files that trigger a false positive.

I'm sympathetic because once long ago forwarding a message to abuse@example.com or spam@example.com was a common way certain senders requested that non-users (of their service) should report "bad" messages coming from their service. But I had an ISP that blocked suspicious messages outbound by me, so I couldn't send the requested report.

I don't think I would go as far as Lena suggests, and moderate them without that being a group option; I'm concerned that few group moderators would have the knowledge to make a safe decision for their group. A choice between "moderate" or "reject" might be useful, with "reject" the default.

By the way, I assume none of the above applies to the boatloads of absolute junk from invalid sources (malware-infected PCs and the like) that I presume you've been dropping all along. Those deserve the black hole treatment.

Shal
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Jim Higgins
 

I don't expect scanning to change anything here for me since my groups use plain text and no attachments in the first place.

Actions? Perhaps DROP ALL and DROP ATTACHMENT ONLY should be available... as well as maybe some sort of "Quarantine for Review/Moderation by Group Owner" option.

Notification? Notify Owner, Notify Sender, Notify Both seem like decent options. Notify Owner (or both) seems to go hand in hand with an action of "Quarantine for Review..." (above).

Jim H



Received from Mark Fletcher at 8/21/2018 03:24 AM UTC:

Hi All,

I've been testing virus/phishing scanning the last few weeks and I'm pretty confident that it's catching what it should. In testing, it's scanning all emails, all uploaded files and photos. And right now, if the sender is not a subscriber, it drops any emails it finds has a virus or phishing attack.

My default implementation would be to turn it on so that it blocks all emails, files and photos that it finds has a virus or phishing attempt. Do you see any reason to not do it this way?

The scanner I'm using is here: <http://www.clamav.net/>http://www.clamav.net/

Thanks, Mark
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Laurence Taylor
 

Ellen Moody <ellen.moody@gmail.com> wrote:

I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it
will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what
that is).
UTC - Co-ordinated Universal Time. Pretty much the same as GMT.

West coast USA is GMT-8 (-7 in summer) and East coast is GMT-5 (-4 in
summer).

--
rgds
LAurence
<><
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Ellen Moody
 

I confess to not knowing where this main forum is. I also am unaware that I have any software called a timezone. 

I'm one of those who when confronted with centigrade temperatures doubles the number and adds thirty. I don't know the formula for moving from fahrenheit to centigrade. I can't imagine meters as yet: inches, feet, yards, miles. But I do have the decimal system downpat ....

Ellen


On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 12:12 PM Toby Kraft <toby@...> wrote:
Ellen,
Planned outages are posted as events on the calendar in the Beta/Main forum.  If you have your timezone configured correctly (Account -> Preferences), when you view the calendar and hover over the event, the time of the outage will be displayed in your timezone.  As shown here (I'm in Central (Chicago) timezone):

Information on what is affected by the outage is included in the event.
Thanks
Toby

moderated Re: Virus scanning

Dave Wade
 

Mark,

 

Yes scanners can catch spam/phish/malware, the trouble is that virus scanners are tuned for high detection rate because any one choosing a virus scanner will invariably choose the one with the highest detection rate.

Of course this usually equates to a high false positive rate, but no one ever tests for this, and figures for false positives are notoriously hard to find.

This can be a real pain as it often results in critical messages, for example those about SPAM, things containing copies of bad headers in the message body, things where you are trying to send samples of VBScript.

Have you tested what happens when you send innocent, but slightly malicious messages?

 

Dave

 

From: main@beta.groups.io <main@beta.groups.io> On Behalf Of Ken Schweizer
Sent: 21 August 2018 16:55
To: main@beta.groups.io; beta@groups.io
Subject: Re: [beta] Virus scanning

 

Hi Mark,

 

My questions are:

Will the Owners/Moderators know that a message was blocked?

Will we know how many are blocked each day?

When will it start?

 

Yahoo blocked messages and never notified us what, why and how many. It became a disaster not knowing.

 

Ken

 

"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." God

 

From: main@beta.groups.io [mailto:main@beta.groups.io] On Behalf Of Mark Fletcher
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2018 10:25 PM
To: beta@groups.io
Subject: [beta] Virus scanning

 

Hi All,

 

I've been testing virus/phishing scanning the last few weeks and I'm pretty confident that it's catching what it should. In testing, it's scanning all emails, all uploaded files and photos. And right now, if the sender is not a subscriber, it drops any emails it finds has a virus or phishing attack. 

 

My default implementation would be to turn it on so that it blocks all emails, files and photos that it finds has a virus or phishing attempt. Do you see any reason to not do it this way?

 

The scanner I'm using is here: http://www.clamav.net/

 

 

Thanks,

Mark
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Toby Kraft
 

Ellen,
Planned outages are posted as events on the calendar in the Beta/Main forum.  If you have your timezone configured correctly (Account -> Preferences), when you view the calendar and hover over the event, the time of the outage will be displayed in your timezone.  As shown here (I'm in Central (Chicago) timezone):

Information on what is affected by the outage is included in the event.
Thanks
Toby
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Shal Farley
 

Chris,

the only question I have is will group owners know what emails are rejected?

Hopefully these will be activity logged like any other rejection.

Shal
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Ken Schweizer
 

Hi Mark,

 

My questions are:

Will the Owners/Moderators know that a message was blocked?

Will we know how many are blocked each day?

When will it start?

 

Yahoo blocked messages and never notified us what, why and how many. It became a disaster not knowing.

 

Ken

 

"And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." God

 

From: main@beta.groups.io [mailto:main@beta.groups.io] On Behalf Of Mark Fletcher
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2018 10:25 PM
To: beta@groups.io
Subject: [beta] Virus scanning

 

Hi All,

 

I've been testing virus/phishing scanning the last few weeks and I'm pretty confident that it's catching what it should. In testing, it's scanning all emails, all uploaded files and photos. And right now, if the sender is not a subscriber, it drops any emails it finds has a virus or phishing attack. 

 

My default implementation would be to turn it on so that it blocks all emails, files and photos that it finds has a virus or phishing attempt. Do you see any reason to not do it this way?

 

The scanner I'm using is here: http://www.clamav.net/

 

 

Thanks,

Mark
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Leeni
 

Pacific time is 3 hours earlier then Eastern time
So when it is 11PM Pacific Time it is 2AM Eastern Time
 
Pacific 11PM
Mountain 12Midnight
Central 1AM
Eastern 2AM
 
 
 
 

-------Original Message-------
 
Date: 8/21/2018 10:18:44 AM
Subject: Re: [beta] Groups.io is down ...
 
Thank you all. So I'll just proceed as usual, only I'll send my postings from my gmail.

I am confused about time: how does pacific time 11 pm translate into daylight savings time on the east coast?

Ellen

On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 11:01 AM magicalkingdomgroups@... <magicalkingdomgroups@...> wrote:
It seems that messages are going through to the groups however once in a while that downtime message appears when you try to get to a groups IO home page.
 
Ilene 
 
 
 
 
-------Original Message-------
 
Date: 8/21/2018 9:33:21 AM
Subject: [beta] Groups.io is down ...
 
Dear People, 

I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what that is). 

So, 1) When will groups.io be back EST or daylight savings time?

2) Is it better to wait until the site is back up again before posting again? or does it not matter if one posts now and then the messages come through when the site is back up?

I hope this goes through

Ellen Moody
 

 
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

William Finn
 

11pm pst is 2pm est


On Tue, Aug 21, 2018, 11:18 AM Ellen Moody <ellen.moody@...> wrote:
Thank you all. So I'll just proceed as usual, only I'll send my postings from my gmail.

I am confused about time: how does pacific time 11 pm translate into daylight savings time on the east coast?

Ellen

On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 11:01 AM magicalkingdomgroups@... <magicalkingdomgroups@...> wrote:
It seems that messages are going through to the groups however once in a while that downtime message appears when you try to get to a groups IO home page.
 
Ilene 
 
 
 
 
-------Original Message-------
 
Date: 8/21/2018 9:33:21 AM
Subject: [beta] Groups.io is down ...
 
Dear People, 

I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what that is). 

So, 1) When will groups.io be back EST or daylight savings time?

2) Is it better to wait until the site is back up again before posting again? or does it not matter if one posts now and then the messages come through when the site is back up?

I hope this goes through

Ellen Moody
 
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Ellen Moody
 

Thank you all. So I'll just proceed as usual, only I'll send my postings from my gmail.

I am confused about time: how does pacific time 11 pm translate into daylight savings time on the east coast?

Ellen

On Tue, Aug 21, 2018 at 11:01 AM magicalkingdomgroups@... <magicalkingdomgroups@...> wrote:
It seems that messages are going through to the groups however once in a while that downtime message appears when you try to get to a groups IO home page.
 
Ilene 
 
 
 
 
-------Original Message-------
 
Date: 8/21/2018 9:33:21 AM
Subject: [beta] Groups.io is down ...
 
Dear People, 

I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what that is). 

So, 1) When will groups.io be back EST or daylight savings time?

2) Is it better to wait until the site is back up again before posting again? or does it not matter if one posts now and then the messages come through when the site is back up?

I hope this goes through

Ellen Moody
 
moderated Event: Website outage #outage - Tuesday, 21 August 2018 #outage #cal-invite

main@beta.groups.io Calendar <main@...>
 

Website outage #outage

When:
Tuesday, 21 August 2018
6:50am to 7:50am
(GMT-07:00) America/Los Angeles

Description:

At approximately 6:50am, the website started to become unresponsive. Internally, the web servers were rebooting because they were running out of database connections. I originally thought that this was a database issue, but after much investigation, I was able to track down the problem. A fix I pushed to the site yesterday afternoon affecting Chat was now causing database connections to leak. I have temporarily disabled the Chat function until I can fix the bugfix. Email delivery was not affected during this time.

I will post a post mortem either later today or tomorrow, after I've reinstated Chat and had some time to consider what, if any, changes to make based on this outage.

Calendar

moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Leeni
 

It seems that messages are going through to the groups however once in a while that downtime message appears when you try to get to a groups IO home page.
 
Ilene 
 
 
 
 

-------Original Message-------
 
Date: 8/21/2018 9:33:21 AM
Subject: [beta] Groups.io is down ...
 
Dear People, 

I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what that is). 

So, 1) When will groups.io be back EST or daylight savings time?

2) Is it better to wait until the site is back up again before posting again? or does it not matter if one posts now and then the messages come through when the site is back up?

I hope this goes through

Ellen Moody
 
moderated Re: Groups.io is down ...

Barbara Byers
 

This went through fine, and so did a couple of messages I just posted to my groups, so I believe whatever the issue is, it's not affecting everything.

Barb

 


On 2018-08-21 10:25 AM, Ellen Moody wrote:

Dear People, 
 
I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what that is). 
 
So, 1) When will groups.io be back EST or daylight savings time?
 
2) Is it better to wait until the site is back up again before posting again? or does it not matter if one posts now and then the messages come through when the site is back up?
 
I hope this goes through
 
Ellen Moody
moderated Groups.io is down ...

Ellen Moody
 

Dear People, 

I just read that Groups.io is down for maintenance. We were informed it will be back by 11 pm pacific time and 4 am UTC (? -- I don't know what that is). 

So, 1) When will groups.io be back EST or daylight savings time?

2) Is it better to wait until the site is back up again before posting again? or does it not matter if one posts now and then the messages come through when the site is back up?

I hope this goes through

Ellen Moody
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Michael Capelle <mike.capelle@...>
 

I agree with this Mark.
 
 

Sent: Monday, August 20, 2018 10:24 PM
Subject: [beta] Virus scanning
 
Hi All,
 
I've been testing virus/phishing scanning the last few weeks and I'm pretty confident that it's catching what it should. In testing, it's scanning all emails, all uploaded files and photos. And right now, if the sender is not a subscriber, it drops any emails it finds has a virus or phishing attack.
 
My default implementation would be to turn it on so that it blocks all emails, files and photos that it finds has a virus or phishing attempt. Do you see any reason to not do it this way?
 
The scanner I'm using is here: http://www.clamav.net/
 
 
Thanks,
Mark
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Dave Sergeant
 

I have mixed feelings on this. Will it be possible to disable the virus
scanning on individual groups. Yahoogroups had virus scanning (probably
a far inferior system to what you are proposing) and we always disabled
it. Apart from the odd occasion when members had their Yahoo emails
hacked we never had any issues with viruses getting through. But my
groups are private groups with membership needing to be approved. Maybe
different for public groups.

Likewise with my email, I have disabled the server side filtering and
do it all myself with Mailwasher.

Dave

On 20 Aug 2018 at 20:24, Mark Fletcher wrote:

My default implementation would be to turn it on so that it blocks all
emails, files and photos that it finds has a virus or phishing attempt.
Do you see any reason to not do it this way?

http://davesergeant.com
moderated Re: Virus scanning

Nick Dunmur
 

On 21 Aug 2018, at 07:03, Lena <Lena@...> wrote:

If the sender is a subscriber then please moderate the message instead of dropping it. False positives are possible.

That seems sensible to me.

best

Nick
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