[Mailman-Users] Re: More spam :-(

[JC Dill]

On 09:46 AM 3/26/01, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
 >JC Dill wrote:
 >
 >> It shouldn't be that hard for those who write mailing list software to
 >> program and configure their own "user's list" to only accept posts that are
 >> either A) from subscribers or B) have the list product (mailman) mentioned
 >> somewhere in the body of the post.
 >
 >    a) There are several automated bots that do subscriptions through a 
variety
 >of list servers.  Nothing will stop a post from coming through if that 
account
 >is subscribed.

In 3 years of list administration, including several large and active 
lists, I have *yet* to have a spammer subscribe (bot or no) to a list in 
order to send spam to it.  Theoretically it is possible, but in practice I 
have yet to see it done.  Do you have any evidence that this is what is 
actually happening in this case?

 >    b) It is, in the footer and the subject tag

First, any given post to the list should be matched against the list 
subscriber role.  If the post is from a subscriber, post it.  If the post 
is from a non-subscriber, subject content filtering (such as checking to 
see if the message mentions "mailman") should happen before the post is 
approved (automatically or manually) for being distributed to the list.  If 
a footer or list subject tag are added, that should happen after the post 
is approved for being distributed to the list.  So the footer and subject 
tag should have no impact on content filtering to determine if a 
non-subscriber post should be distributed to the list.

jc