[Mailman-Users] Regexp for blocking addresses

[Mark Sapiro]

On 9/24/15 1:47 PM, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>
> I am trying to block variants of ceertain gmail addresses but I'm having
> trouble concocting the right rexexp to accomplish the task.
> 
> Gmail addresses can contain embedded periods and can be followed by a
> '+' and an arbitrary suffix. So all the following are the same address:
>       * joebloe at gmail.com
>       * joe.blow at gmail.com
>       * j.o.e.blow at gmail.com
>       * joe.blow+abcd at gmail.com


In my prior reply
<https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2015-September/079856.html>,
I focused on your literal question and answered accordingly, but it
occurs to me that you are trying to deal with bot generated
subscriptions of addresses of the form word.word+digits at gmail.com. While
this pattern is the most common one I've seen, not all addresses are
like that. They are in different domains and while all gmail addresses
may have dots, not all addresses do and a rare few have had non-digits
after the +, but all I've seen have at least 5 digits following a + and
immediately preceding the @.

For the lists @python.org, we are now using

^.*\+.*\d{3,}@

For the history, see
<https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2015-August/079668.html>,
<https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2015-September/079829.html>
and
<https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2015-September/079844.html>
and other posts in those threads.

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