[Mailman-Users] Don't reply to held messages

Mark Sapiro mark at msapiro.net
Sat Apr 20 23:42:25 CEST 2013


Norbert Aschendorff wrote:

>Hi, I'm the list administrator of a list which frequently receives spam
>messages which then are hold because of an implicit destination. As it
>isn't considered as clever to reply to spam mails (because it's a
>confirmation of the validity of your address to the spammer), is there
>the possibility to disable the automatic reply to a held message (/Your
>message to [List] awaits moderator approval/)? I didn't find information
>on the web (but maybe I just used the wrong keywords :)


Yes, it is not good to respond to spam, but not so much because it
confirms that your address is in some sense active, but more
importantly because it causes backscatter to the innocent third party
whose address is spoofed in the From: header.

Anyway, the answer to your question is go to the list's web admin
General Options page and set respond_to_post_requests to No.

Also, it's likely this is not set, but check thet Auto-responder ->
autorespond_postings is also No.

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



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