[Mailman-Users] Stopping Spam

[Brad Knowles]

At 5:47 PM +0000 2004-11-29, Gary Smith wrote:

>  In one of the previous posts (Allow members to send e-mail to another list)
>  it was mentioned that intelligent spammers could monitor the output of a
>  list and then spoof one of the subscribed addresses.

	Indeed, this is a risk.

>  I dont know much about emails, but how is this possible that they can
>  monitor the output?

	They subscribe to the list.  They see all the addresses come 
across that a regular user would see, then pick one that they want to 
spoof.

>                       It is possible to stop it easily?

	Nope.  If all posters were required to use PGP-signed messages, 
and you had PGP integrated into Mailman so as to reject all messages 
which were not correctly PGP-signed, that might work.  Of course, 
anyone who wanted to join the list and post would need to upload 
their key to the PGP keyring on the mailing list server.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.