Re: More comp.lang.ada spam from Ada France

From: Samuel Tardieu (sam_at_rfc1149.net)
Date: 10/16/04 

Date: 16 Oct 2004 13:39:02 +0200

>>>>> "Björn" == Björn Persson <spam-away@nowhere.nil> writes:

Björn> Spam through a mailing list is easily blocked by only allowing
Björn> subscribers to send to it.

Sure, but this is not as straightforward as it sounds. Let me explain.

We use the Mailman mailing-list manager, which is really great and
allows mail to news bidirectional gatewaying. However, there is a flaw
in Mailman privacy options in this case:

  - either we allow anyone to post to the list, in which case
    undetected spam[1] goes to the newsgroup as well

  - either we only allow subscribers to post to the list, in which
    case Mailman wants to moderate posts coming from the newsgroup too

Mailman is free software and can be patched; however, at the moment we
lack the time to fix that. Google searches brought nothing useful; I
will check with the Mailman maintainers whether a known solution
requiring no coding is available or not.

If we cannot find a solution in a reasonable time, we will suspend the
service as mail spam is a real annoyance, especially when gatewayed to
newsgroups. It would be a shame to be forced to do that as we have 58
people currently reading comp.lang.ada through this gateway.

  Sam

Notes:
[1] We use SpamAssassin as a front-end to filter out most of the spam,
    believe it or not, what you see in this group is only the leftover 

-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/sam

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