Action Phrase Restrictions
Action Phrases are a feature in Lyris List Manager that allow you to trigger various actions based on some text appearing in a message. You can look for a trigger phrase in the body of
a message, in the headers, in the Subject:, the From:, etc.
Action phrases permit several kinds of security restrictions to be placed on postings. For example, you can use an action phrase to refuse if a message if:
1) Some particular text does
not appear in a specific place in the message.
2) Some particular text does appear.
A few examples will help make this clearer.
Suppose that everyone in your company uses the Eudora Email program, which, incidentally inserts a "X-Mailer: Eudora" header in every message it sends. You can put an action phrase that
automatically rejects any message not created with Eudora. Then, to hide the fact that "X-Mailer: Eudora" might be the trigger phrase, have the Lyris List Manager action phrase change the message to
say "X-Mailer: Windows Eudora", so that it no longer matches.
This use of the action phrase feature allows you to reject all messages that do not have some secret phrase in them. If you want, you can create multiple action phrases to add several layers of
checks. This sort of checking is very useful with announcement lists.
Action phrases also have the capability of sending a document back, so you can inform the attempted sender that their message was refused. You also have the option being notified when an action
phrase triggers. This lets you monitor attempts to "hack" your system.
Another example: Suppose that you maintain a mailing list to discuss Apple computers and you are not interested in discussing Unix. You can set an action phrase to refuse any message that mentions
"Unix". People often use this feature to bar inappropriate language on their discussion lists.
Action phrases are not restricted to postings. For example, they can also be put on an autoresponder. You could put your price list on an autoresponder, but require a password to get it. If the
password is not in the email message, the action phrase triggers and sends a refusal message. If the password is present, the action phrase does not trigger and the price list is sent.
Some people use action phrases to disable Lyris List Manager server commands or to be notified of things that are suspicious. For example, some mailing list owners have had their lists "hacked" when
they were using other list managers and like to be told if someone is trying to snoop through their list. Thus, they disallow the "review" command (which already does not provide the member list)
and set themselves to be notified of any attempts to use this command.
Yet another use of action phrases is to only allow postings from certain domains -- for example, only people whose email addresses have the text "@yourcompany.com" in their From: address are allowed
through.
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