Re: [Groff] XXX Funny movie

[Nick Stoughton]

On Fri, 2007-01-26 at 23:05 +0100, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> > This filtering component is stupid. Why doesn't it discard
> > a message after it has deleted all content anyway?
> 
> Good question.  Most of the spam is automatically deleted, but some of
> them apparently not.  I'm very bad in managing lists -- maybe there is
> something I can do on my side, but I don't have the time to
> investigate this further.
> 


Mailman content filtering works like this: 
<quote>
when a message is received by the list and you have enabled content
filtering, the individual attachments are first compared to the filter
types. If the attachment type matches an entry in the filter types, it
is discarded. 

Then, if there are pass types defined, any attachment type that does not
match a pass type is also discarded. If there are no pass types defined,
this check is skipped. 

After this initial filtering, any multipart attachments that are empty
are removed. If the outer message is left empty after this filtering,
then the whole message is discarded. Then, each multipart/alternative
section will be replaced by just the first alternative that is non-empty
after filtering. 
</quote>

The problem we are seeing is that after all the parts have been removed,
there is still a non-empty signature text piece left ... so the message
is not discarded. BUT ... that signature is added by mailman itself! 

It would be worth turning this off ... to my mind it adds little at the
best of times, clutters replies that include the original post, and may
be the cause of failing to remove these spams! Werner, if you go to

http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/admin/groff/?VARHELP=nondigest/msg_footer

(I'm guessing this URL ... you need the admin password to get this far;
I derived it from a list I maintain) you can remove the footer
altogether.
-- 
Nick Stoughton                          Cell: 510 388 1413
USENIX Standards Liaison                Fax:  510 548 5738