[Mailman-Users] Most "secure" settings

[Mark Sapiro]

Steven Clift wrote:
>
>Assuming that encrypted e-mail is a red "watch me" flag in countries which
>limit political freedoms, what would be the best settings for an e-mail list
>to protect the participants from retribution?
>
>My initial thoughts:
>
>1. Private list, invite-only.
>2. No archive.
>3. Replace From: Name/e-mail with group address - can you do that?


Yes. The anonymous_list setting controls this.


>4. Add some disclaimers about best use of the forum, like use of names,
>speaking in code for censored words, etc.
>
>What would you add? 


Don't know.


>Can the list act as an anonymizer of sorts so that only the message body of
>posts are sent out and all the header stuff stripped out?


Not really. When you set anonymous_list to Yes, the From: is replaced
with the list address and Sender: and Reply-To: are removed, but
that's it. The Message-ID: remains and that can reveal the originating
domain. All the Received: headers remain and that may reveal the
originating IP.

It would be easy enough to modify the code to address all this, but it
would require code modification or a custom handler
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.067.htp>.


>Is there a good way to tell if the list is being blocked or filtered by a
>countries firewalls?


Only if they 'reject' or 'bounce' the message.


>I am most worried about someone's computer or webmail account being
>compromised with the e-mail in-box leading back to people.


If you made a custom handler to remove all but minimal, 'safe' headers,
you'd be pretty secure in terms of the information in the outbound
message assuming posters didn't include signatures or other
identification in the body of the post. Then you'd only have to worry
about the 'bad guys' getting access to the logs on your server.

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