[Comphelp] Spam filter

[Phil Arcuni]

Bob,

To my knowledge, Mailman will not set "No Mail" for bounces. It unsubscribes
addresses for multiple bounces. Normally, only an administrator can access
the admin page for a list. An individual normally can only access his own
options page to set features like that and he needs his personal password,
which is sent to him on the first of every month. I notice that you allow
list members to see the list of subscribers.(I normally do not.) I do not
believe that he can make changes. Try accessing the list of members using
only your personal password. Please let me know what happens. None of my
lists are set that way.

I too have seen some No Mail settings of which the member seems unaware. No
doubt they set it accidentally. I doubt that you would do that. Anyway, this
is a good reminder to check the obvious first. I very often need that
reminder myself.

It is not unlikely that your address has been "used" by an infected computer
to send spam and even a virus out to the whole world of other addresses in
that computer. It is not surprising that one of your list members might have
your address as well as the list address. Remind your list members to
install a good anti-virus program, and update it regularly. As you know,
there  inexpensive, good ones, that can be set to update automatically.

Unless your list has frequent need for large attachments, I suggest you
reduce your max message size to 10KB. This may prevent some spam and viruses
from getting through from list members, or from their spoofed addresses. If
that is too small for some users of HTML users of e-mail, they should switch
to plain text. So far I have had no complaints about reduced message size,
and the occasional valid large message can be manually cleared whenever you
get to it.

Regards, Phil

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Schloemanb@aol.com>
To: <comphelp@usps.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: [Comphelp] Spam filter


> Phil,
>
> This is getting to be very interesting.  I am the list administrator for
the
> Phoenix mailing list and I am a subscriber of course.  But what you
recently
> noted got me to thinking about the "no mail" check box in the mailman
client.
> I just logged in and sure enough my AOL address was set for "no mail".  I
have
> now "unchecked" that function and will see what happens next.
>
> The question is how the devil did that get set?  I sure did not do it.  It
> has been my experience that the mailman client sets it for recipents when
email
> to them bounces.  On occasions I have reset the "no mail" function for
others
> in our squadron when this has happened to them, i.e., they have been away
and
> their mail box fills up.
>
> The irony of the whole matter is that I have been kept very busy as list
> administrator discarding the spam that the mailing list receives only to
wind up
> being considered a spammer.  Has someone spoofed my email address?
>
> Bob Schloeman
>