[Mailman-Developers] spammers harvesting email'ids [was] UI for Mailman 3.0 update

[स्वक्ष]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 22:43, Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:
> Ian Eiloart wrote:
>>
>>Well, maybe, but I've had to switch on approval for various lists because
>>of subscribing spammers.
>
>
> As Barry suggests, setting moderation of new members as the default can
> also thwart the subscribing spammers.

A smart spammer would hardly post to the mailing list --atleast on
linux lists its asking to be moderated or kicked out, depending on the
admins.

I've checked out spammers who mass subscribe to the lists at Debian,
Ubuntu, Fedora and RH, to access the email id's of all the subscribers
(if this is set as available only to the list members). If the
settings are "membership list is available only to the *-owner", the
spammer can still subscribe, and lurk on the list to silently harvest
the email id's of all the folks who post mails to any list they lurk
on. The latter can be identified by checking their TLD when they sub
to the list but if they use *-free-email-provider like a gmail or
yahoo address to sub and lurk, its hard to tell.

-- 
thanks and regards,
vid || http://svaksha.com