[Mailman-Users] Digest option for Yahoo and AOL subscribers?

[Richard Damon]

On 5/24/14, 4:24 PM, Allan Hansen wrote:
> I just realized that setting the digest option could be a temporary solution for my Yahoo and AOL subscribers until things get sorted (hopefully by Yahoo and AOL stopping this nonsense). My Mailman installation comes with the system (Mac OS X). Maiman is 2.1.14 and the OS is 10.5.8. I have no plans to upgrade either any time soon.
>
> The idea of using the list address as the From: address is not good. It hides the sender and it messes up the archives.
>
> Yours,
>
> 	Allan Hansen
> 	Westminster, CA
Making Yahoo and AOL subscribers to be on digest will do nothing about
the problem. It is them posting that causes the problem.

Putting everyone on systems that respect the DMARC settings (which
include Yahoo, AOL, plus a number of others including Comcast, SBC,  and
others) will "fix" the problem, as the digests don't claim to come from
Yahoo or AOL, so their DMARC settings don't matter, but with all the
problems of the digest instead.

>From what I have seen, any version of Mailman before 2.1.16 (and
preferably 2.1.18) just isn't compatible with DMARC and you need to make
a hard decision of what to do if you can't (or won't) update to a
version that is compatible. (I don't see Yahoo and AOL changing their
policies in the near future).

You can just ban all Yahoo and AOL users.
You can allow Yahoo and AOL users, but just not let them post.
You can set you list to be anonymous.
You can hack something into your email system to get around the problem.
You can implement some semi-manual system to mitigate the problem.
You can ignore the problem, and get a lot of you subscribers
unsubscribed from bounces (or turn off bounce processing), live with the
missing emails, and the possible loss of reputation from your email
system due to all the "unauthorized" email that comes from it.

What I did while waiting for the 2.1.18 update was to place on
moderation (via a "spam" filter, not actually going in a putting on
moderation) all Yahoo and AOL email addresses, and when a message from
one of them came in, I would temporarily switch the list to anonymous,
release the message, and return the list to normal. This was a pain,
which I was willing to endure til the fix came in, I would not want to
commit to this long term. An alternative option would be to manually
resubmit the messages, rewriting the from address to something that
won't cause a problem (like adding .invalid to the domain of the
address). Again, this would be a pain if you can't automate it.

My own opinion is that if there is any way you can upgrade to 2.1.18-1,
do that, anything less will be draconian or a pain.

-- 
Richard Damon