On Tue, 15 Oct 2002 08:47:39 +0100 Mark Goodge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> A pre-list spam filter will deal with some of it, but not all of it. That's very close to untrue. Note: TMDA can read mailman list configurations, and membership rosters in particular, and can filter on that basis. I've been fronting my lists with TMDA (see my HOWTO) for a few months now. Due to other accidents of history all of my lists are hand moderated. I can't state that a TMDA setup will catch all SPAM, but you might like the below: Stats: Prior to TMDA there was an average of 20 - 30 SPAM and virus messages per list in the moderation queue. Within the last three months I've had a grand total of __two__ virus messages reach the moderation interface for *ANY* list. No SPAM messages have reached any list's moderation interface. Caveats: I also do heavy MIME filtering via `mimefilter` along with TMDA filtering. Basically this means I remove all MIME parts which aren't text/plain or message/rfc822, and if the resulting message is less than 20 bytes long I silently discard it. (See the HOWTO for details) I deployed the MIME filter prior to deploying the TMDA filters. It was responsible for a considerable reduction in SPAM and virus mail reaching the moderation interfaces -- down from ~50 a day to 20 - 30. Definitely enough to notice, but no more. TMDA took it down so close to 0 as to be near indistinguishable. Observations: In three months of TMDA fronted list operation: Just over 30 addresses have been confirmed thru TMDA (ie posters posting from non-subscribed addresses). 2 valid posts from 2 different addresses were not confirmed. In the one case I was able to research fully it was due to misconfiguration of the mail systems at his ISP as his messages were sent with an invalid (ie bouncing) Return-Path. As TMDA sends the confirmation to the Return-Path, that didn't work. Given this (rather gross) screwup on his ISP's part, I don't consider this a problem. The other case's domain fell off the net before I was able to get around to tracking the details down. I'd be unsurprised it was a similarly screwed mail system. 5 members (who hit the TMDA confirmation) exclaimed something equivalent to: "If that's all that's required to work with this new filter then there's no problem at all!" One went on at some length. Asides from the five admiring comments, there have been no other comments from users on the TMDA aspects. Then again, TMDA is transparent to the majority of posting users as they post from subscribed addresses. Do you have any idea how pleasant it is to moderate lists which have zero SPAM and zero virus messages? And its been that way for months... -- J C Lawrence ---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. [EMAIL PROTECTED] He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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/