[Mailman-Developers] Interesting study -- spam on posted addresses...

[John Morton]

On Monday 18 February 2002 17:02, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> On 2/17/02 7:48 PM, "Larry McVoy" <lm@bitmover.com> wrote:
> > Second, the point is that even if mailman is 100% perfect, it's not
> > at all clear that that would result in even 1% less spam hitting home.
> > If that's even remotely close, then it seems like efforts could be better
> > spent on screening technology.

> To me, it's more an issue of "we can't be part of the problem", not "we're
> the solution". I have a couple of admins who want their addresses removed
> from all public pages -- which I've refused to do, because I think the need
> for access by a user in trouble trumps the admin's privacy. I think at
> least one of those admins has solved it by setting up an admin-specific
> account, and redirecting it to /dev/null, which, if I ever definitely catch
> him doing so, will get him in trouble...

If they can set up admin specific accounts that redirect to /dev/null, then 
they can set up procmail to drop HTML mail, and say they're doing so anywhere 
they're advertising the admin email address. That would filter 90% of the 
spam they're likely to recieve for a start.

Something that mailman can help with, though - assistance in filtering based 
on whether the sender is joined to a list that the admin account is tied to. 
Just a simple boolean is/isn't on the list should be enough; leave the policy 
to the delivery agent/user. 

John