[Bug] Someone not a member of list is treated as member - strange
In my list test I have my address1 as member (only this one member). I definitely send a mail from my address2[sic] to ml test.
The list settings are:
- accept mails from members (address2 is not a member)
- discard mails from non-members (address2 is not a member of ml test)
When sending from address2, my mail is accepted. When I, for sake of completeness switch 1. to moderate mails from member[sic], my mail from address2 gets moderated.
Please explain. It looks like a bug.
I double-checked the field "accept from non-members" to be empty, yes, is empty, where I otherwise add all members by adding the internal ml whitelist in form of the entry @whitelist@mydomain.com .
On 8/23/25 05:57, Wikinaut wrote:
When sending from address2, my mail is accepted. When I, for sake of completeness switch 1. to moderate mails from member[sic], my mail from address2 gets moderated.
If any of the From: header, the envelope sender, the Reply-To: header if any or the Sender: header if any of a post contains a member address, the post is considered to be from that member. That is the default list, but it can be modified by setting sender_headers in the [mailman] section of mailman.cfg.
See https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/-/blob/master/src/mailman/email/message.p... and https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/-/blob/master/src/mailman/config/schema.c...
Does this explain the issue?
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Unfortunately not!
I expressly removed my REPLY-TO address1 (= address 1 is the member of the list) and double-checked three times. I also scrutinued the headers of my test mails, which were accepted where they should not.
At the moment, I am scared. I discovered the issue when sending to real mail, where I set up someone as a moderator, where I am neither with address1 nor address2 member, that list had "moderate mails from non-members" set, but at this list I was added by having my addresses in our @whitelist@mydomain.com.
Because I thought, that being in the whitelist could cause my mail passed directly to the recipients, I started tests.
Perhaps you can test this at your site?
I need to say, that address1 and address2 (and a third address3) are addresses of myself as the admin-owner of the whole mailman3+mailmanweb stuff. Can this explain? But hopefully not.
On August 23, 2025 7:47:38 AM PDT, Wikinaut <mail@tgries.de> wrote:
Unfortunately not!
In that case, I suspect the issue is that address1 and address2 are both associated with the same user. Go to <https://your.domain/mailman3/users> and search for address1 and manage that user to see all the associated addresses.
If address1 and address2 are the same user, this behavior is expected.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> Sent from my Not_an_iThing with standards compliant, open source software.
Yes, my three addresses (address1 , address2 and mailman3-admin@mydomain.com) are somehow glued together. Why? Because these three I used for logging as Admin.
Honestly, I don't think, that addresses (in my current case on top level, but as I understand, this could happen for every "user") should be treated as, sorry for uppercase, MEMBERS, when they are not expressly member of a list with a →distinct← address.
please let us discuss.
On 8/23/25 11:40, Wikinaut wrote:
Honestly, I don't think, that addresses (in my current case on top level, but as I understand, this could happen for every "user") should be treated as, sorry for uppercase, MEMBERS, when they are not expressly member of a list with a →distinct← address.
please let us discuss.
Mailman 3 is different from prior Mailman versions in that Mailman 3 has a concept of a person. The person is a user and a user has one or more email addresses one of which is preferred. See <https://docs.mailman3.org/projects/mailman/en/latest/src/mailman/docs/8-mile...>.
This corresponds more closely to real life than prior Mailman.
If a user is a member of a list with delivery enabled, mail from that list is sent to that user's preferred address.
Your own subject recognizes this. You say "Someone not a member of list is treated as member", but the 'Someone', i.e. the person, is a member of the list and should be treated as a member regardless of which of their email addresses they post from.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
CORRECTION
Didn't I say, that I was not member of the list? I need to double-check, but treating any of n addresses of a user as automatically treating that user as "member" is not very logical behaviour.
Okay.
As long as at least one of my three "user" addresses (user has address1, address2, address3) is part of a @whitelist@mydomain.com, it may be at least the REPLY-TO address2, it won't matter if I member of that specific list I will be treated as MEMBER of the list.
This explains, why my test mail was sent directly and was not moderated, what I wanted to test.
Because it may be a breaking change in mailman3 - no one wants this - I withdraw any suggestions in my previous posts in this threads. I think, everyone has to live with that issue.
On 8/23/25 11:51, Wikinaut wrote:
Because it may be a breaking change in mailman3 - no one wants this
I do not think is is a breaking change and I strongly disagree that no one wants it.
If you want prior Mailman behavior, just don't link multiple addresses to one user. You can have a separate user for each address and then each address will be considered as belonging to a different person which is apparently what you want.
Going back to your original issue, why do you have a problem? The fact that a post from one of your addresses was accepted even though it wasn't from the address that was subscribed in no way says that a post from an arbitrary nonmember would be accepted.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 8/23/25 11:43, Wikinaut wrote:
CORRECTION
Didn't I say, that I was not member of the list? I need to double-check, but treating any of n addresses of a user as automatically treating that user as "member" is not very logical behaviour.
Of course it is logical. You, the person, are a member of the list so you post to the list should be treated as from a member regardless of which of your addresses it comes from.
Why is that a problem?
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Mark Sapiro writes:
Of course it is logical. You, the person, are a member of the list so you post to the list should be treated as from a member regardless of which of your addresses it comes from.
Why is that a problem?
People are not particularly logical about this kind of thing. They want what they want at the moment (compare the discussion with Odhiambo where he wanted the same address to correspond to different users). People with multiple addresses frequently want to separate their outgoing messages as well as incoming messages into separate streams. (Eg, one of the addresses is for specific use on an anonymous list.) But in many cases what they want is as you say, "I" am subscribed so any of my addresses should do.
While your explanation that a (human) person who wants that behavior should link separate addresses to separate Users is a perfectly good technical answer, I would not expect typical folks to figure that out for themselves. I don't have a suggestion for a user-friendly UI for this; I think it's just a hard concept to grasp with the amount of effort we generally want to put into a mailing list subscription.
It might be a good idea to add this issue to the documentation on anonymous lists.
-- GNU Mailman consultant (installation, migration, customization) Sirius Open Source https://www.siriusopensource.com/ Software systems consulting in Europe, North America, and Japan
participants (3)
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Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Wikinaut