[Mailman-Users] Stopping Spam

[Mark Sapiro]

Douglas McCarroll wrote:

>I'm a relative Mailman newby, but this is a big interest of mine. I've just set 
>up a couple of lists, and here's what I've done to prevent the harvesting of 
>list-user email addresses by spammers. Some may be excessive - I don't fully 
>understand all the options - but when in doubt I take the cautious option.
>
>1. Set anonymous_list to Yes.
>
>2. Set first_strip_reply_to to Yes.
>
>3. In new_member_options I've selected Conceal The Member's Address.
>
>4. For private_roster I've selected List Admin Only.
>
>5. Set obscure_addresses to Yes.

Given 4, 3 may be overkill. "Three" means the response to an e-mail
"who" command or a roster viewed on the web will contain only those
people who've bothered to change their setting which will be very few.
Since "four" means that only someone with the list admin or list
moderator password can retrieve the roster, you may be unnecessarily
inconveniencing yourself to have both.

You don't say if your list has archives, but addresses in archives
aren't very secure even when obscured and addresses in signatures
aren't obscured in the "downloadable version". If you have archives
you may want to consider making them private and not overriding the
following Defaults.py settings:

  ARCHIVER_OBSCURES_EMAILADDRS = Yes
  PUBLIC_MBOX = No

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan