On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 12:11:43 -0800 (PST), Harshal wrote

Hello,

The "-request" addresses for my lists get spammed daily which wouldn't be too much of a problem except that the list server helpfully sends back the 'help.txt' file to the 'From' address in the spam. Since almost all of these addresses are fake, all such emails result in a 'Unknown user' error message.

I was to update the configuration so that the help.txt file is not sent back unless it is a real help request. It is currently sent even for messages with obvious spam subjects.

I have set auto_help = no in my rc.custom file but this doesn't seem to have any affect.

Is there anything else I can do?

Well, a first step would be to put a spam checker in rc.local.r00 or rc.local.r10 (and enable the one yiu ise in rc.custom) so the obvious spams are dropped before reaching the rest of the processing in rc.request. The spam filter I use is not a harsh one but it doesn't need to be for these purposes. If you still get some bogus requests through that trigger the help-file then you can tune the rules in rc.request (for instance I removed the signature scoring rule * 3^0 ^^(.+$)*^([ ]*$)*-- since it was getting triggered once and awhile by bogus requests.

You can be more draconian and only allow "help" to work for those already subscribed.

Rich