Mailman Privacy Options - EsoSoft Corporation

Privacy Options
Mailman was created with the privacy shortcomings of other lists in mind. There are a number of manager-configurable settings that can help in preventing spam, subscription abuse, and widespread disclosure of list traffic to non-subscribers.

Subscribing

Description	Value
Advertise this list when people ask what lists are on this machine?	In general, persons in the outside world can see a list of available Mailman lists by visiting http://www.mylist.net/mailman/listinfo By setting this value to "no," this list will not be included in the directory of available lists.
What steps are required for subscription?	Confirm: when a subscription request is made, a message will be sent back to the address being added. The new member will have to reply to the message (without having to modify anything) for their subscription to become active. This prevents someone from maliciously adding people against their will. Require Approval: when a subscription request is made a note will be sent to the list administrator letting them know that a person is petitioning to join. The list administrator will be given a URL to follow that will then show them the request and allow them to approve or deny it via the web. Confirm+Approval: includes both of the above.
Is the list moderator's approval required for unsubscription requests? (No is recommended)	Select Yes if you would like the list moderator to "approve" all unsubscribe requests. Generally, you would leave this option set to No. List subscribers should usually be able to unsubscribe easily.

Ban List
Addresses in this list are banned outright from subscribing to this mailing list, with no further moderation required. Add addresses one per line; start the line with a ^ character to designate a regular expression match.

Membership Exposure

Description

Value

Who can view subscription list?

This setting dictates access to the subscription list via the web.

Anyone: this allows anyone in the world to browse by and take a look at who the members of your list are. Never ever use this setting unless you are trying to say "I have contempt for all of my list members and hope that they get spammed out of their minds."

List members: this is the traditional setting for most lists, allowing participants to see who the other people on the list are but blocking view to the general public. This settings can be overridden by individual users who have set the "hide" option for their account.

List admin only: only the administrator can see the list members.

Show member addrs so they're not directly recognizable as email addrs?

This is a nice feature that discourages theft of lists: the membership list does not show actual addresses but instead shows participants as "username at something.com". This should block most harvesters if they manage to get through to the listing.

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