bcc settings on mailing lists

[David Holmes]

Hi Tim,

On 31/01/2012 4:04 PM, Tim Bell wrote:
> Hi David
>
>> Can we get some kind of global change to the mailing lists so that a bcc
>> does not require moderator approval?
>
> bcc: header lines are typically not passed to the recipient (that is
> what makes it a blind carbon copy).  Refer to section 4.5.3 of RFC
> 822.
>
> Unfortunately this loophole also describes a vector used by arriving SPAM.
>
> Most email held for moderation by mailman is due to "Post by
> non-member to a members-only list", but second place is "Message has
> implicit destination", which is how mailman treats BCC: emails.
>
> Looking at the current mailman/logs/vette file on mail.ojn (28MB,
> going back to September of 2009) we have this breakdown of messages
> held for moderation:
>
>         5   Message may contain administrivia
>        19   Too many recipients to the message
>        29   The message headers matched a filter rule
>        60   Post to moderated list
>       201   nnnnnn bytes with a limit of mmm KB
>       871   Message has implicit destination
>    79870   Post by non-member to a members-only list
>
> While the BCC: messages are ~100x less than the non-member messages,
> that is still large enough that I hesitate to open up the rules and
> allow them all through without moderation.

A bcc'd message from a non-member would still get trapped by the ""Post 
by non-member to a members-only list" - right? So we're only talking 
about bcc's from members.

Thanks,
David
-----

> Do others have thoughts on this?
>
> Cheers and Best Regards-
>
> Tim Bell