spam and majordomo

[Adam M. Costello]

Damien Miller <djm at mindrot.org> wrote:

> I want to keep the list as open as possible, but will close it if it
> gets spammed repeatedly.

If it's a majordomo list, then restricting posts to subscribers merely
means that posts from non-subscribers get bounced to the list owner (or
moderator, if one is specified), who can simply pipe the message through
the "approve" command if it's not spam.

Here's what we do for some lists I maintain:  The config file for
mailing list foo (foo.config) contains a line like:

restrict_post = foo senders

senders is a fake mailing list--there are no aliases allowing you to
send mail to it, but you can subscribe and unsubscribe addresses to/from
it.

Now when a post comes from a non-member address, it gets bounced to
owner-foo.  If it's not spam, the list owner can approve it, and if
they expect more messages to be coming from that address (for example,
if it's an alternate address of a subscriber), they can subscribe that
address to the senders list and not be bothered again.

This is not a perfect solution, because the list owner still gets the
spam, but I know of no perfect solution to the spam problem.

This also gives the list owner an opportunity to insert a note into the
message, like "[non-member submission]", so that people know they should
Cc their replies to the sender as well as the list.

AMC