[Mailman-Users] How do the spammers do it?

[Christophe Meessen]

If each user used a specific address to post to the list, one would know 
the source of inspiration of the spammer. For public lists it would not 
be easy to setup though.

Another method which I suspect was used for this purpose is to send to 
each subcriber a mail with a specific reply-to address in the form 
reply+12345 at domain.com. Where 12345 is a user identifier. In this mail 
you request that users reply to confirm that the address is used by a 
real person and operational.

spybots that collect valid email addresses would collect this address 
once the requested reply is sent by the user. If the spammer use this 
address you would then know its source of inspiration.