[Mailman-Users] Reducing Mailman backscatter

[Mark Sapiro]

On 06/10/2013 10:17 AM, Andrew Hodgson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am getting seriously hounded by my server provider, who is receiving complaints from ISPs that my server running Mailman is sending users spam messages.  When looking into this further, I notice that these messages are mainly administrivia responses, and that all of them mostly come from non-list members.
> 
> Does anyone know any way of discarding messages to specific addresses (mainly requests addresses) where the member is not on the list?  Obviously the subscription addresses I would like to leave as is for the moment.


I would probably do this by editing Mailmamn/Queue/CommandRunner.py
along the lines of

--- /var/MM/2.1/Mailman/Queue/CommandRunner.py	2013-05-20
08:12:33.000000000 -0700
+++ CommandRunner.py	2013-06-10 16:45:42.774899892 -0700
@@ -115,6 +115,10 @@
             if line and line.strip():
                 args = line.split()
                 cmd = args.pop(0).lower()
+                if cmd not in ('join', 'subscribe'):
+                    if not self.mlist.isMember(self.msg.get_sender()):
+                        self.respond = False
+                        break
                 ret = self.do_command(cmd, args)
                 if ret == STOP or ret == CONTINUE:
                     found = ret


> I have also set all the moderation settings to discard for non-members as well to see this this improves matters.


That will help, and also be sure to set respond_to_post_requests to No
on the General Options admin page.

Also, if your Mailman is 2.1.15 (or newer), you can set

RESPONSE_INCLUDE_LEVEL = 0

in mm_cfg.py.

# This controls how much of the original message is included in automatic
# responses to email commands.  The values are:
# 0 - Do not include any unprocessed or ignored commands.  Do not include
#     the original message.
# 1 - Do not include any unprocessed or ignored commands.  Include only the
#     headers from the original message.
# 2 - Include unprocessed and ignored commands.  Include the complete
original
#     message.
#

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