Bug#407530: [Pkg-mailman-hackers] Bug#407530: Self-Approve mails if membery-only setting is just for spam protection

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Montag, den 22.01.2007, 13:20 +0100 schrieb Thijs Kinkhorst:
> On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 10:18 +0000, Joachim Breitner wrote:
> > > Thank you for your suggestion. Spam bots register and post on my web
> > > forum which has email verification of registrations. So do you really
> > > think this would help?
> > 
> > If they can do that, they also could confirm the subscription
> > confirmation and then spam the list. But currently, only web spam bots
> > do that, not e-mail spam bots, do they? 
> 
> Since Mailman is a high-profile mailinglist server, I think that the
> simple need to click such a link would be implemented quite quickly. If
> implemented upstream, this feature would reach Debian stable about 1,5
> years from now the earliest, and there's a good chance that bots have
> caught up by then.
> 
> I do not think that the implementation effort offsets the benefits.

Hmm.  I haven’t yet seen e-mail spam direct targeted against mailing
lists. What you describe is a mixture of current web-spam-bots and
e-mail bots. As soon as the e-mail bots indeed start waiting for bounces
and activate links, they might as well register to the mailing lists. 

So I think the feature does not considerably weaken the spam-protection
provided by member-only posting, but does make life easier for both
posters and list master. 

But I can understand your point, so if you think such a feature would
not be worth it, that’s ok.

BTW, are you part of upstream of does upstream read these bug mails?

Greetings,
Joachim

-- 
Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
Debian Developer
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