OT: MailMan spam protection (was Re: [ILUG] hey hun )

[Justin Mason]

Rick Moen said:

> Well, the alternative will be to further complicate the subscription
> ritual, in hopes of making it more diffcult to automate.  There are 
> reliable reports that some spammers have succeeded in scripting the
> GNU Mailman subscribe-confirm-spambomb-unsubscribe sequence, which
> is potentially bad news for those of us who've run spam-free lists
> until now by setting subscriber-only posting and then manually adding
> non-subscription addresses used by legitimate users to the "addresses of
> members accepted for posting to this list without implicit approval
> requirement" roster (a one-time hassle per such address).

There is another alternative, which I hacked up for the IIU list
using a perl "condom" [1] around the list addr.  Instead of requiring
list mgr approval, it replies to an unsubscribed sender asking for
confirmation with a "magic keyword", and once the confirm comes in,
allows the mail through.   Less work for the moderator...

  http://jmason.org/software/scripts/mailman-block-non-members.txt

I didn't know enough Python to implement it as a MM patch, though.

([1]: hmm, not really a condom I suppose, more a cap.  but now I'm really
drifting OT ;)

--j.