Spam by subscription to list

[Michael Lustfield]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

This seems to be a pretty hot topic. I'd like to make note of what I
did to stop spam on my list.

First is of course that only members can post to the list. I did my
best to review where legitimate email comes from. I realized that it's
very very seldom among any list that non-members ever try to post to a
list without it being spam. From what I've seen, this has never
happened to my list. This caused me to do this in /privacy/sender:
generic_nonmember_action: Reject
nonmember_rejection_notice: A very kind message explaining why

Second is that some spammers to join lists in order to spam. To avoid
this, in /privacy/sender:
default_member_moderation: Yes
member_moderation_action: Hold

To help open the constraint a little bit, I've also added this
in /privacy/sender:
accept_these_nonmembers:
  ^.*\@canonical\.com$
  ^.*\@ubuntu\.com$

What I do is when they make a post for the first time after
subscribing, it will be held for moderation. After I approve this,
their mod setting will be turned off and they have free range to post.

My list is pretty low volume and over 99% of my previous email was
simply spam. This level has dropped to about 10%. 10% I can manage, 99%
was killing me.

I was thinking there was an option to automatically remove the mod bit,
but I'm not finding where it exists.

For non-members that need to post, I also put in the rejection notice a
link to a form that will will be accepted. I used Drupal to make this
form.

I hope this helps some of you. Of course, I may be too restrictive.
- -- 
Michael Lustfield

Kalliki Software, SD LoCo
Network and Systems Administrator
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAkoqDTMACgkQ3y7Nst6YLGVnXQCeIQlmdKETLWTz3asZnhBXje4Q
Q5gAni+DCSuS+D9TSq0IX2Aw6ijKKOzT
=4xcZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----