[PLUG] Re: News Gateway

[John Hampton]

OK, this is how I understand the situation and the changes being made.

Randal said:
>I missed something though.  I thought the SPAM was injected via
>the SMTP portal.  Why are you hacking the NNTP portal?

It was being injected via SMTP because the list was open to all posters, not just subscribers only.  Originally (at least when I joined) the list was subscribers only.  Then the list changed servers.  During this change, Karl thought that it would be nice to have the NNTP portal to the list (which it obviously has been for some).  However, Karl thought that in order to allow posting from NNTP, he needed to change the mailing list from being subscriber-only, to wide open.  This is when the spam started coming in via SMTP, because mail was being allowed from anyone.  The change that is being enforced is to switch the mailing list back to a subscribers only list which will eliminate the spam since it comes from unsubscribed addresses.  The only caveat to this is that in order to keep the posting via NNTP, one now needs to subscribe to the list and when posting via NNTP make sure that his/her From: header is correct.  So, the NNTP portal will still be functional, and with the "no mail" option of mailman, you won't have to get the list via SMTP.  If you have another solution of how to solve the problem, I'm sure Richard and Karl would be open to suggestions.

John Hampton
Programmer Analyst
G.I. Joe's, Inc.
john.hampton at gijoes.com