Mailman: Privacy Settings

Cal Poly Pomona strongly recommends that Mailman mailing list administrators (a.k.a. list owners/moderators) take the following two precautions to ensure that confidential or sensitive information exchanged via your Mailman mailing lists is kept secure.

Keep your archived messages private

If you archive messages for your mailing list, it is important to know whether your list’s archived messages are set for public or private archival – and to recognize the difference between the two options.

Public Archive – If you use public archive, archived messages can be found and viewed by anyone with access to the Internet, and they will routinely appear in the results of search engines, including the Google Cal Poly Pomona search.
Private Archive – If you use private archive, then archived messages can only be viewed by the administrators and subscribers of your mailing list, and they will not appear in search engine results.

NOTE: The initial default when Mailman was installed at Cal Poly Pomona was for public archives. In July, 2005, the default was changed to private, and all existing lists were set to private. If you want the archives of your list to be private, you don't need to do anything, but you can check anyway just to make sure. If you intended the archive to be public, you must reset it by following the steps below.

Go to the Mailman administrative page and select your mailing list’s administration area (if your list name is hidden see below – you will need to enter the address manually).
The first screen that will appear after you’ve logged in will be the “mailing list administration General Options Section.” Select “Archiving Options” from the list of “Configuration Categories” by clicking on it once.
Scroll down to the second archiving option listed on the screen. Under the “Description” heading it will read “Is archive file source for public or private archival?” and under the “Value” heading it will read “Public” and “Private.” Select the option you want by clicking once.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button marked “Submit Your Changes.” After you’ve done so, the process is complete.

Do not advertise your mailing list

If you are setting up a mailing list that is to be used only by specific subscribers (for example, a list intended to send messages only to the students in your class or one intended to send messages only to your colleagues at work) it is recommended that you do not advertise your mailing list.

Turning off the “advertise list” feature means that your list will be viewable only by those individuals who know the name of your list or are invited to join your list, as contrasted with anyone with Internet access. In other words, screening subscribers to your mailing list is made a lot easier by limiting the number of people who can find your list in the first place.

To turn off the “advertise list” feature, follow the steps below.

Go to the Mailman administrative page and select your mailing list’s administration area (if you don't see your list, that means that it is already not advertised, and you need do nothing).
The first screen that will appear after you’ve logged in will be the “mailing list administration General Options Section.” Select “Privacy options” from the list of “Configuration Categories” by clicking on it once. (If you just completed the process for changing your archive settings, you can return to the “General Options Section” screen by clicking on “General Options” in the top left corner of the page).
Scroll down to the first privacy option listed on the screen. Under the “Description” heading it will read “Advertise this list when people ask what lists are on this machine?” and under the “Value” heading it will read “No” and “Yes.” Select “No” by clicking once.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button marked “Submit Your Changes.” After you’ve done so, the process is complete and your list will no longer be advertised.