[Mailman-Users] confirm email marked as spam - reduce unique identifier length?

[Jim Dory]

Thanks much guys, you've given me direction. I seem to only have access to
the /home directory on the server and the trouble ticket guys are saying
they can't make changes.. so pursuing those avenues. This is above my pay
grade as far as understanding MTAs, but can edit files via shell as I have
run linux servers in the past. The list in question has about 2100
subscribers - it is a community announcements and trade list - and I'm the
admin but don't make any money off it - just a volunteer.

Stephen:
The "simpler" was in a line from a quote from the tech support guys at the
host company. I see I didn't make that clear. I've asked them for more
clear directions on accessing the mm_cfg file or at least to verify the
current settings in it, as I don't seem to have permissions for the /etc
directory.
thx, JD

On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 11:09 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>
wrote:

> On May 15, 2016 9:47:50 PM PDT, Jim Dory <james at dorydesign.com> wrote:
>
>  > >I believe that the subject of the confirmation email "confirm
>  > >40c7fa45251ce14ecd7c26c712648332fa3b326b" is triggering the spam
>  > >experts filter. Is it possible to reduce the subject line to
>  > >something simpler?
>
> That depends on your definition of "simple".  From the point of view
> of the would-be subscriber, this is as simple as it gets.  Just hit
> "reply", then "send", and she's done.  The token itself could be
> reduced, but it's still going to be at *least* 5 or 6 characters, and
> then it looks like spam to me.  I've gotten lots of spam from people
> who put a 4-8 character ticket identifier in the Subject field.
>
> Mark Sapiro writes:
>
>  > Whoever manages the Mailman installation should set
>  >
>  > VERP_CONFIRMATIONS = Yes
>  >
>  > In mm_cfg.py. This may or may not require MTA changes to recognize
>  > '+' as a recipient delimiter.
>
> Note: this works by putting the confirmation token in the return
> address after a '+'.  So it is *your* MTA that needs to recognize '+'
> as ending the mailbox.  The confirmation message sent to the person
> trying to subscribe goes to their usual address, so isn't a problem.
> All the necessary configuration can be done at your end.  Whether your
> host will help you is up to them, of course, but most sites that
> support Mailman already have that configuration.
>
>
>