[Mailman-Users] FW: Your confirmation is required to leave the Mailman-Users mailing list

[Mark Sapiro]

On 02/16/2015 12:48 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
> This is the second time I've received one of these. I'm told the only way one of these could be generated is if there's a URL published out there that does this when a bot crawls it, or if someone deliberately tried to unsubscribe me.


There's another scenario that's more likely. See, e.g. the post at
<https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2014-October/077947.html>.

In this post, you quote a prior post which you received from the list
and from which you did not remove the list footers including an
'Unsubscribe' link to your user options page.

This sends your 'Unsubscribe' link to every list member and in turn some
of these recipients forward it who knows where.

Ultimately, someone receives it and thinks she wants to unsubscribe from
what ever is sending her these, follows the link to your options page
and clicks the Unsubscribe button on that page.

Spiders won't do this because even though they will follow the link to
your options login page, they won't post the form, but people who
receive that message directly or indirectly will.

Always remove list footers from quoted material before replying (if your
MUA doesn't do it automatically), and this scenario can't happen.

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