Utilities: List Settings: New Subscriber Policy: Security

 

Security

Defines how secure the list is to new subscriptions. The possible choices are:

 

Open

Anyone can join (no approval needed).
 

Private

The administrator must approve new members.


Password

New members need to know the password to join.
 

Closed

Only an administrator can add new members.

 

An Open mailing list allows anyone who finds this mailing list can join, either by email or by using the web interface. After joining (and possibly confirming the membership), this person will have full member status.

 

A Private mailing list prevents anyone from finding the mailing list from joining immediately. When they attempt to join, (either by email or using the web interface) a List Administrator will have to approve their request to join before the person becomes a member. List Administrators who have their settings defined to receive Admin Mail will receive an email notice when a person requests to join a Private mailing list. When the list admin receives a request to join a private list and the request was done by email, the notification email message that ListManager sends out also includes the original requestor's email message, which can be helpful determining if the person should be allowed onto the list.

 

If the admin changes the potential member's status from Needs Approval to Normal through the web interface (not via email), the new member will not receive a Hello message unless the status is changed to Needs Hello.

 

A Password protected mailing list allows anyone who finds this mailing list can join (either by email or using the ListManager web interface) and will be automatically approved only if they know the password. If they do not know the password, they will be automatically rejected. The password is defined in a field further down this page. For subscription requests that arrive via email, the password is entered at the end of the subscription request, as in:
subscribe jazz-discuss open-sesame

 

A Closed mailing list is one in which non-members are not able to apply for membership. If a request for membership arrives by email, it will be automatically denied. On the ListManager web interface, the Subscribe button will not be a choice. New members to a Closed mailing list must be added by the List Administrator.

 

You can change the Security status of a mailing list at any time. For instance, you can start out as an Open mailing list (so that anyone can join) and then become a Private mailing list (so that new members must be approved by a List Administrator).

 

Password

If the list Security (above) is set to Password, this field defines the password required for new members to join the mailing list.

 

Allow Joining by Email

This setting determines whether subscription requests by email will be accepted. By default, members can join a mailing list using the ListManager web interface or by sending a "subscribe" email command to ListManager.

 

If you want to require people to join using the ListManager web interface, you can change this setting so those requests to join by email are rejected. Note that disallowing joining by email may disable some web based subscription methods that depend on email to submit a request to join.