Subscription issue with ghost confirmations
I have a list owner who had his subscription policy set to confirm. Apparently that was too hard for his list members to handle so he changed it to moderate only. If someone sent a subscription request that needed to be confirm, did not respond to it, and then tried subscribing again after the member policy changed to moderate, their 2nd subscription attempt still shows up in the confirmation queue. Is that normal behavior. My understanding is it is. Please let me know if I am wrong here.
The real mystery here is when someone tried subscribing again (listname-subscribe@listdomain) hours after the subscription policy was changed to moderate and they still showed up in the confirm queue. How is that possible? I tested the list with two of my addresses and both showed up in the moderation queue as expected. As far as I can tell from the mailman logs, this was the person's first attempt at subscribing.
-- Brian Carpenter Harmonylists.com Emwd.com
On 10/29/20 5:23 AM, Brian Carpenter wrote:
I have a list owner who had his subscription policy set to confirm. Apparently that was too hard for his list members to handle so he changed it to moderate only. If someone sent a subscription request that needed to be confirm, did not respond to it, and then tried subscribing again after the member policy changed to moderate, their 2nd subscription attempt still shows up in the confirmation queue. Is that normal behavior. My understanding is it is. Please let me know if I am wrong here.
Are you certain that the request waiting confirmation is the second one and not the first?
The real mystery here is when someone tried subscribing again (listname-subscribe@listdomain) hours after the subscription policy was changed to moderate and they still showed up in the confirm queue. How is that possible? I tested the list with two of my addresses and both showed up in the moderation queue as expected. As far as I can tell from the mailman logs, this was the person's first attempt at subscribing.
I suspect it was not the first attempt and that the subscription waiting confirmation was requested when the policy was confirm.
The real question is if a user has a subscription waiting confirmation and the policy is changed to moderate, is a second request rejected because of the request waiting confirmation. If so, I think this is a bug which should be fixed.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 10/29/20 11:33 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
On 10/29/20 5:23 AM, Brian Carpenter wrote:
I have a list owner who had his subscription policy set to confirm. Apparently that was too hard for his list members to handle so he changed it to moderate only. If someone sent a subscription request that needed to be confirm, did not respond to it, and then tried subscribing again after the member policy changed to moderate, their 2nd subscription attempt still shows up in the confirmation queue. Is that normal behavior. My understanding is it is. Please let me know if I am wrong here.
Are you certain that the request waiting confirmation is the second one and not the first?
Good point and I am not sure. I will try to note that if this pops up again.
The real mystery here is when someone tried subscribing again (listname-subscribe@listdomain) hours after the subscription policy was changed to moderate and they still showed up in the confirm queue. How is that possible? I tested the list with two of my addresses and both showed up in the moderation queue as expected. As far as I can tell from the mailman logs, this was the person's first attempt at subscribing.
I suspect it was not the first attempt and that the subscription waiting confirmation was requested when the policy was confirm.
The confirmation moderation notice had the date-time stamp that came a few hours AFTER the subscription policy was changed. Also I only saw one confirmation request sent out via Postfix' mail.log. I saw no other for this subscriber. Same thing with the smtp.log. I cannot duplicate this behavior when I try to subscribe. My subscription attempts went straight to moderation.
The real question is if a user has a subscription waiting confirmation and the policy is changed to moderate, is a second request rejected because of the request waiting confirmation. If so, I think this is a bug which should be fixed.
Do you think this is a bug with Mailman core or my system?
-- Brian Carpenter Harmonylists.com Emwd.com
On 10/29/20 8:51 AM, Brian Carpenter wrote:
On 10/29/20 11:33 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
The real question is if a user has a subscription waiting confirmation and the policy is changed to moderate, is a second request rejected because of the request waiting confirmation. If so, I think this is a bug which should be fixed.
Do you think this is a bug with Mailman core or my system?
If the current policy is moderate and the user has a prior request waiting confirmation and a new request is rejected because of the prior request waiting confirmation, I think that is a bug in core, but I don't know if that is the case or not.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 10/29/20 12:21 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
On 10/29/20 8:51 AM, Brian Carpenter wrote:
On 10/29/20 11:33 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
The real question is if a user has a subscription waiting confirmation and the policy is changed to moderate, is a second request rejected because of the request waiting confirmation. If so, I think this is a bug which should be fixed.
Do you think this is a bug with Mailman core or my system?
If the current policy is moderate and the user has a prior request waiting confirmation and a new request is rejected because of the prior request waiting confirmation, I think that is a bug in core, but I don't know if that is the case or not.
I think it is a bug in Mailman 3 core. I am seeing the same behavior on my Postorius server.
-- Brian Carpenter Harmonylists.com Emwd.com
Hi Mark,
This has occurred again. A person sends an email to listname-subscribe@listdomain and the subscription policy of said list is set to moderate only. Instead of honoring this, a confirmation email is sent out. Now the email address that made this request does not show up at all in any of my logs. There is no record of them making a previous subscription attempt before the subscription policy was changed to moderate. Here are some observations:
- The two occurrences of this happening was to Gmail users.
- The two occurrences of this happening was when an email is being sent to the listname-subscribe@listdomain address.
- This is only happening on 1 list.
This may have no bearing on the issue but the list address of this problematic list is ******-owners@listdomain. I know there is an alias created for each list that is listname-owner@listdomain. Just throwing that out there.
<princess-leia-voice>Help me Obi-Wan Sapiro. You are my only hope.</princess-leia-voice>
On 10/31/20 10:28 AM, Brian Carpenter wrote:
Hi Mark,
This has occurred again. A person sends an email to listname-subscribe@listdomain and the subscription policy of said list is set to moderate only. Instead of honoring this, a confirmation email is sent out. Now the email address that made this request does not show up at all in any of my logs. There is no record of them making a previous subscription attempt before the subscription policy was changed to moderate. Here are some observations:
- The two occurrences of this happening was to Gmail users.
- The two occurrences of this happening was when an email is being sent to the listname-subscribe@listdomain address.
- This is only happening on 1 list.
This may have no bearing on the issue but the list address of this problematic list is ******-owners@listdomain. I know there is an alias created for each list that is listname-owner@listdomain. Just throwing that out there.
<princess-leia-voice>Help me Obi-Wan Sapiro. You are my only hope.</princess-leia-voice>
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So I confirmed this happening on another MM3 server. Setting a subscription policy to open/moderate and sending an email to listname-subscribe@listdomain from an email address that has no previous interaction with the MM3 server results in a confirmation email being sent out.
So the question now is: Is this a bug? Or an intentional design?
--
Brian Carpenter Harmonylists.com Emwd.com
Can I get a mailman developer to weigh in on this please.
Thanks, Brian
Brian Carpenter writes:
So the question now is: Is this a bug? Or an intentional design?
I consider it a bug. The intent behind having independent options for moderation and confirmation is to provide for moderated lists in close-knit communities. There are many reasons the list owner might want to configure the list "opt-in", but they do know everybody and moderation is "enough security" for them.
I don't have a guess why it's happening. I may be able to look at it in a few days, but this is my busiest quarter and COVID and election jitters are making it worse, so we'll see. Maybe Abhilash or Mark can get to it sooner.
Steve
On 10/31/20 7:28 AM, Brian Carpenter wrote:
This has occurred again. A person sends an email to listname-subscribe@listdomain and the subscription policy of said list is set to moderate only. Instead of honoring this, a confirmation email is sent out.
The issue is that when a request is received to subscribe an address to a list and that address is not verified and the pre_verified flag is not set in the request, the user is sent a confirmation request. This is not a request to confirm the subscription request, but rather a request to confirm the address, however they use the same template so they are indistinguishable.
We probably should check the subscription policy and not send this request if the policy is moderate. We should also ignore a pending request if the policy is moderate per <https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman/-/issues/789>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
participants (3)
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Brian Carpenter -
Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull