Kenneth Porter wrote: >I want to remove aliases from my mailman installation to avoid spam >backscatter. Which aliases do I absolutely need? > >Here's a list from mm-handler: > >@ValidActions = qw(admin bounces confirm join leave > owner request subscribe unsubscribe);
You do not "absolutely" need any of these in the sense that you can post to a list and receive posts without them. However most are "useful" You do not need 'admin'. It is a deprecated address from 2.0.x and is a synonym for bounces. 'bounces' and 'owner' do not backscatter and without them, there will be no automated bounce processing and some owner notifications from Mailman won't be deliverable, so I wouldn't remove those. Email messages from Mailman requesting confirmation for various things are sent from the -request address with subject "confirm xxxxxx" or from the -confirm address with a suffix of +xxxxxx (where xxxxxx is the confirmation token) so that various confirmation request emails can just be replied to. If you don't change all the templates for these messages to remove the "reply to this email" part, you need these addresses. Also, the -request address is mentioned in the RFC 2369 List-Unsubscribe, List-Help and List-Subscribe headers. 'join' and 'leave' are synonyms for 'subscribe' and 'unsubscribe'. Jo Rhett would say you don't need any of these because nearly everyone uses the web. He might also say you don't need/want 'request' and 'confirm'. I wouldn't go that far. This is controversial stuff. There's no one size fits all answer. Also consider that Jo Rhett's original proposal was to not create aliases. This is different from the mm-handler approach. If an alias is missing, the mail for that address will be rejected at SMTP time. This is good for spam. It is also OK for a legitimate mail because the sender knows it wasn't delivered. In the mm-handler case, mail for these addresses is silently discarded. This is also OK for spam, but not so good for legitimate mail. -- Mark Sapiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.027.htp
