[R] Increased Spamming via Nabble

[Martin Maechler]

Dear R-help users,

In the last couple of days there has been a greatly increased
attempt to sneak spam through to the R-help mailing list. A few
of these spam messages have made it into the list, but the
majority have been discarded by the moderators.  The spam
messages have been posted to the list via the Nabble interface
and start with a direct copy of a message that has been posted
to R-help in the past, therefore looking like a legitimate
post. The spam message then requires the reader to click on a
link back to Nabble to read the remainder of the message.  If
these links are followed then the reader will eventually find
themselves on a web-page full of advertisements rather than the
discussion that they had been lead to believe they would be
viewing.

The rate of these spam messages has been increasing to the point
where if nothing were done, the job of moderating the list would
grow beyond what the volunteers would be able to reasonably
handle and would become a full time job.  The messages typically
arrive in batches, on occasion more than 20 at a time, and there
have been dozens recently.  So in response the spam filters have
been strengthened to automatically reject these spam messages
before human moderation.

If you do not use the Nabble interface then this should have no
effect on your enjoyment of R-help (other than keeping you from
seeing these spam messages). A side effect of the increased spam
filter is that legitimate messages sent via Nabble will be
caught by the filter and automatically rejected. We recognize
that this will be inconvenient for Nabble users, but until
Nabble fixes their interface to prevent their service being used
to spam in this way we do not see any reasonable alternatives.

We strongly suggest that posts to R-help be done directly
through e-mail rather than using the Nabble interface. Reading
the posts via Nabble should not be affected, only the sending of
e-mails to the list.  One option for Nabble users is to
subscribe an e-mail address to the list (see the link at the
bottom of this and all R-help e-mails) with the option to
receive no e-mails from the list.  This way the user can send
e-mails to the list using that e-mail address directly, but will
not receive e-mail directly from the list and can continue to
read R-help via the Nabble interface.

Martin Maechler,
in the name of the volunteer R Help moderators.