[Mailman-Developers] Subscription Authentication.

[Ian Eiloart]

Hi,

We've been discussing mailing lists over on the ietf-dkim mailing list, and 
the issue of when a receiving MTA should trust mail from a list.

I had an idea, though it's only vaguely formed:

It would be nice if a list server would verify subscription requests using 
OAuth, Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication, or similar. Perhaps 
instead of the usual verification by email.  If 
<http://fingerprintapp.com/email-client-stats> is accurate, that's about 
35% of email users with Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

If that happened, then then the subscriber's mail system has a chance of 
understanding that the subscriber has, indeed, subscribed to the list. At 
that point, the receiving mail system might whitelist mail from that list, 
provided that it had a good DKIM signature, or an SPF pass, perhaps.

One might even build some sort of federated list management infrastructure, 
so a user could go to one site to manage all their Mailman3 mailing list 
subscriptions. With some kind of future standard, perhaps other MLMs could 
join the party later.

-- 
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
01273-873148 x3148
For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/