I had a situation where a user on one of my lists had the vacation utility turned on and a posting to the list resulted in a looped email because the vacation email response was then posted and on and on. The reply-to posts option has been set to "the list" and I would like to keep this setting. Is there any setting that can be changed to keep this from happening? I can not always depend on the user disabling their account on the list server. I need a way for the list server to recoginize this looping is happening and take action.
Thank you, Clark Cooper
On 02 November 2001, Clark Cooper said:
I had a situation where a user on one of my lists had the vacation utility turned on and a posting to the list resulted in a looped email because the vacation email response was then posted and on and on. The reply-to posts option has been set to "the list" and I would like to keep this setting.
I believe that "stupid autoresponders" is one of the canonical reasons why reply-to "the list" is Considered Harmful. IOW, if you insist on having reply-to "the list", you will probably have to live with this annoyance.
Greg-- Greg Ward - software developer gward@mems-exchange.org MEMS Exchange http://www.mems-exchange.org
On Fri, 2001-11-02 at 23:37, Greg Ward wrote:
I believe that "stupid autoresponders" is one of the canonical reasons why reply-to "the list" is Considered Harmful. IOW, if you insist on having reply-to "the list", you will probably have to live with this annoyance.
Stupid autoresponders appear to be endlessly inventive - matched in ingenuity only by stupid virus scanners (which reinject scanned mail into a system with the wrong recipients).
Autoresponders manage to come up with ways of re-injecting mail to mailing lists even when reply-to list is not set (although setting list reply-to is a good way of provoking them, and hideously bad for other reasons).
I wonder if its possible to come up with a better set of filters in the Mailman pipeline to pick up bad autoresponders automatically and push their output to the moderation queue. It would then be useful to have a couple more options on the moderation interface:-
this user/autoreply pattern is OK
this user has a broken autoresponder - suspend them
this user has a broken autoresponder - unsub them
this user has a broken autoresponder - ban them permanently from the list server (including ubsub from all lists) [I would like to have the nuke option too, but this appears subject to network infrastructure requirements at present]
Nigel.
On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 05:22:53PM -0500, Clark Cooper wrote:
I had a situation where a user on one of my lists had the vacation utility turned on and a posting to the list resulted in a looped email because the vacation email response was then posted and on and on. The reply-to posts option has been set to "the list" and I would like to keep this setting. Is
I take it, you've already read the pro (no 's') and cons http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/listreplyto.html
there any setting that can be changed to keep this from happening? I can
Outside of removing the reply to, which will catch many but not all of those problems, my usual answer is to blackhole the server the Emails came from, and send the following to the postmaster: http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/autoresponders.txt
Broken autoresponders should not be tolerated.
not always depend on the user disabling their account on the list server. I need a way for the list server to recoginize this looping is happening and take action.
considering that many of those broken autoresponders don't quote the original message, or use headers like in-reply-to and so forth, it's hard. The only thing that would always work would be to throttle the number of messages per user per unit of time and disable anyone who posts more than 5 times a minute let's say.
Marc
Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key
On Monday 05 November 2001 10:47, Marc MERLIN wrote:
On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 05:22:53PM -0500, Clark Cooper wrote:
I had a situation where a user on one of my lists had the vacation utility turned on and a posting to the list resulted in a looped email because the vacation email response was then posted and on and on. The reply-to posts option has been set to "the list" and I would like to keep this setting. Is
Outside of removing the reply to, which will catch many but not all of those problems, my usual answer is to blackhole the server the Emails came from, and send the following to the postmaster: http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/autoresponders.txt
Broken autoresponders should not be tolerated.
Don't forget the nomail option. As admin, you can edit the membership options of the offender and turn off their mail.
You might also want to look at using Procmail. Procmail gives you a lot more control over mail processing than Mailman's limited support.
On Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 11:19:15PM -0500, Jon Carnes wrote:
On Monday 05 November 2001 10:47, Marc MERLIN wrote:
On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 05:22:53PM -0500, Clark Cooper wrote:
I had a situation where a user on one of my lists had the vacation utility turned on and a posting to the list resulted in a looped email because the vacation email response was then posted and on and on. The reply-to posts option has been set to "the list" and I would like to keep this setting. Is
Outside of removing the reply to, which will catch many but not all of those problems, my usual answer is to blackhole the server the Emails came from, and send the following to the postmaster: http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/autoresponders.txt
Broken autoresponders should not be tolerated.
Don't forget the nomail option. As admin, you can edit the membership options of the offender and turn off their mail.
No, that isn't a solution. If their mail server/autoresponders are broken, I don't want to see any more mail from them until they fix it (and they usually, even if you block them).
They might never fix their system, but they're not my problem anymore.
Of course, you do want to try and educate them (i.e. give them a chance to fix it), but not while their mail is creating loops.
Marc
Microsoft is to operating systems & security .... .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ | Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key
participants (5)
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Clark Cooper -
Greg Ward -
Jon Carnes -
Marc MERLIN -
Nigel Metheringham