[Mailman-Users] Anonymous emails with the sender information

[Mark Sapiro]

On 6/12/2011 3:03 AM, Nigel Woodley wrote:
> 
> The spam problem I have is because we have many members from different
> organisations linked by a private network.
> 
> Emails sent from these organisations are sent out to other members however
> when they are received by other organisations on the private network they
> are rejected because they have not been delivered internally on the private
> network.


I don't understand. Either the Mailman server is on the private network
or not. If other servers on the network are looking at where mail
originates in order to determine whether or not to accept the mail, I
would expect them to be looking at the IP address of the sending server
or possibly things like the domain of the envelope sender or Received:
headers in the message. The last thing I would expect them to look at is
the From: header of the message. And, even if they are looking at From:,
you seem to say that the original sender whose address is in From: is
also on the private network.


> I do not have access to change the configuration files unfortunately so
> custom handlers will not work for me.
> 
> It is a real shame that mailman does not allow you the option of setting up
> anonymous mode with separate options for the email address name and reply to
> fields.


What you seem to want is not anonymizing, but rather just From: address
munging plus perhaps putting the original From: address in Reply-To: in
order to accommodate your specific network configuration. Aside from the
fact that I am skeptical that this will accomplish your goal, this is
not something that anyone else is asking for. Others have asked for the
ability to mung the From: address while preserving the identity but not
the email address of the poster, but these requests are generally
motivated by a desire to prevent replies going to the poster, which is
apparently not what you want.

I suggest you figure out exactly what criteria these private network
servers are using to reject mail, and if it is in fact based on the
From: address, you try to convince the admins of these servers that
making accept/reject decisions based on something so easily and often
spoofed in spam as the From: address is not an effective anti-spam measure.

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