Oh Boy!

[Gerald Combs]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Don Erickson wrote:

> Mailman is fairly straightforward and configurable, everything can be done
> via a web interface.  There is also a patch to strip all html and
> attachments and uuencoded data, thus nullifying the virus threat.  There
> is also an privacy entry for "accept mail from" addresses, so that someone
> could receive mail to one account but post from another.

At the bottom of the privacy optins page is a section that lets you enter
regular expressions that, if matched against the header, flag the message
to be held for approval.  I've combined this with SpamAssassin
(http://spamassassin.taint.org) with pretty good results.

Incoming mail gets piped through SpamAssassin.  If it detects a spam
message it adds "X-Spam-Flag: YES" to the header.  If Mailman sees that
header it holds the message for the administrator to approve.

In the last few months it's kept about 200-some-odd spams from hitting my
mailing lists, with 3 - 5 false positives and about as many false
negatives.

The only problem is that I now have to bring up the Mailman admin page
daily to clear out the spam queue.  At least they're not making it onto
the lists.

> Quite versatile, actually.  And, as always with open source, if you don't
> like something then rewrite it.
> 
> There's also an automatic mail->news gateway included, no extra charge.
> -- 
> Regards,
> 
> -Don
> 
> 
>