How do I prevent subscribers from sending to -bounces address instead of list address?
Greetings,
Apparently, many of my subscribers must be using Outlook, so they see the mailto:listname-bounces@domain hypertext and are copying that to send new messages to the list. Aside from repeatedly telling the users that they need to send to listname@domain, have any of you found a better solution?
Thanks,
-p-- Pat Hirayama Systems Engineer / 206.667.4856 / phirayam@fredhutch.org / Fred Hutch / Cures Start Here CIT | Enterprise IT Services / Advancing IT and Data Services to Accelerate the Elimination of Disease
Sorry, I should add this salient point. Since the subscriber has sent to -bounces, it is going to the list admins, but there is no indication to the subscriber that this has happened. As far as they know, their message has been posted to the list. This seems bad, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to have the list admins forward the message, since that will change the sender.
Thanks,
-p -----Original Message----- From: Hirayama, Pat Sent: Friday, March 04, 2016 10:30 AM To: 'mailman-users@python.org' Subject: How do I prevent subscribers from sending to -bounces address instead of list address?
Greetings,
Apparently, many of my subscribers must be using Outlook, so they see the mailto:listname-bounces@domain hypertext and are copying that to send new messages to the list. Aside from repeatedly telling the users that they need to send to listname@domain, have any of you found a better solution?
Thanks,
-p-- Pat Hirayama Systems Engineer / 206.667.4856 / phirayam@fredhutch.org / Fred Hutch / Cures Start Here CIT | Enterprise IT Services / Advancing IT and Data Services to Accelerate the Elimination of Disease
On 03/04/2016 10:33 AM, Hirayama, Pat wrote:
You can't control what MUA's your user's use. Attempting to educate them, at least in most user populations, is futile.
And Pat added:
It depends on how much work you want to do. If YOU have a decent MUA, you can open the original attached "unrecognized bounce" message and resend it to the list. It might be held for implicit destination, but you can avoid that by adding the -bounces address to the list's acceptable_aliases, at least in the non-verp case, but it's probably better to edit the original To: before resending so other innocent reply-all messages don't go to the bounces address. I.e., there are ways to resend that message To: the list and From: the original sender; how much work they are depends on what tools you have at your disposal.
But, this is the wrong answer because it puts all the effort on the list owner. The right answer is to compose a nice helpful message explaining the situation and what the correct list posting address is and keep that handy on your desktop so when you get one of these you can just forward it back to the original sender together with your message and put the burden back on them. Maybe some will even learn. Others will just blame your list because obviously their Microsoft software can't be doing anything wrong.
Happy Fri Sep 8221 19:03:26 PST 1993
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 03/04/2016 07:06 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
You can't control what MUA's your user's use. Attempting to educate them, at least in most user populations, is futile.
In my zealousness to rant about the clueless, I forgot to mention that starting with Mailman 2.1.14 There is an include_sender_header setting (if not disabled by the site admin) which can be set to no to prevent Mailman from adding a Sender: header with the list-bounces address. This *shouldn't* affect normal bounces as they *should* be sent to the envelope sender, not to the Sender: header.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Ah! include_sender_header does sound like it would be helpful in this case. (And I'm the site admin, actually). Have to decide if it is worth it to either (a) switch from supplied RPMs to source code; or (b) rebuild this server with CentOS 7 instead of CentOS 5 it is currently running. Thanks!
-- Pat Hirayama Systems Engineer / 206.667.4856 / phirayam@fredhutch.org / Fred Hutch / Cures Start Here CIT | Enterprise IT Services / Advancing IT and Data Services to Accelerate the Elimination of Disease
Mark Sapiro writes:
On 03/04/2016 10:33 AM, Hirayama, Pat wrote:
I agree that this is a hard problem, and not one we should try to solve in Mailman 2. But I wonder if we can't do a better job on behalf of list admins in Mailman 3? What I have specifically in mind is to reject the message in Mailman if From (or Sender?) is a list member, *after* checking for "actionable" messages (eg, DSNs for bounce processing). Are there any legitimate reasons for a subscriber to send mail to listname-bounces? The is_subscriber test would avoid 99% of backscatter, as well, I hope.
If people consistently get an automated rejection, most will learn (by now they've figured out that human owners are a lot more flexible and helpful than even the best software == GNU Mailman). Some will scream at the list owner, so probably this feature would need to be an option. :-(
Sorry, I should add this salient point. Since the subscriber has sent to -bounces, it is going to the list admins, but there is no indication to the subscriber that this has happened. As far as they know, their message has been posted to the list. This seems bad, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to have the list admins forward the message, since that will change the sender.
Thanks,
-p -----Original Message----- From: Hirayama, Pat Sent: Friday, March 04, 2016 10:30 AM To: 'mailman-users@python.org' Subject: How do I prevent subscribers from sending to -bounces address instead of list address?
Greetings,
Apparently, many of my subscribers must be using Outlook, so they see the mailto:listname-bounces@domain hypertext and are copying that to send new messages to the list. Aside from repeatedly telling the users that they need to send to listname@domain, have any of you found a better solution?
Thanks,
-p-- Pat Hirayama Systems Engineer / 206.667.4856 / phirayam@fredhutch.org / Fred Hutch / Cures Start Here CIT | Enterprise IT Services / Advancing IT and Data Services to Accelerate the Elimination of Disease
On 03/04/2016 10:33 AM, Hirayama, Pat wrote:
You can't control what MUA's your user's use. Attempting to educate them, at least in most user populations, is futile.
And Pat added:
It depends on how much work you want to do. If YOU have a decent MUA, you can open the original attached "unrecognized bounce" message and resend it to the list. It might be held for implicit destination, but you can avoid that by adding the -bounces address to the list's acceptable_aliases, at least in the non-verp case, but it's probably better to edit the original To: before resending so other innocent reply-all messages don't go to the bounces address. I.e., there are ways to resend that message To: the list and From: the original sender; how much work they are depends on what tools you have at your disposal.
But, this is the wrong answer because it puts all the effort on the list owner. The right answer is to compose a nice helpful message explaining the situation and what the correct list posting address is and keep that handy on your desktop so when you get one of these you can just forward it back to the original sender together with your message and put the burden back on them. Maybe some will even learn. Others will just blame your list because obviously their Microsoft software can't be doing anything wrong.
Happy Fri Sep 8221 19:03:26 PST 1993
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 03/04/2016 07:06 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
You can't control what MUA's your user's use. Attempting to educate them, at least in most user populations, is futile.
In my zealousness to rant about the clueless, I forgot to mention that starting with Mailman 2.1.14 There is an include_sender_header setting (if not disabled by the site admin) which can be set to no to prevent Mailman from adding a Sender: header with the list-bounces address. This *shouldn't* affect normal bounces as they *should* be sent to the envelope sender, not to the Sender: header.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
Ah! include_sender_header does sound like it would be helpful in this case. (And I'm the site admin, actually). Have to decide if it is worth it to either (a) switch from supplied RPMs to source code; or (b) rebuild this server with CentOS 7 instead of CentOS 5 it is currently running. Thanks!
-- Pat Hirayama Systems Engineer / 206.667.4856 / phirayam@fredhutch.org / Fred Hutch / Cures Start Here CIT | Enterprise IT Services / Advancing IT and Data Services to Accelerate the Elimination of Disease
Mark Sapiro writes:
On 03/04/2016 10:33 AM, Hirayama, Pat wrote:
I agree that this is a hard problem, and not one we should try to solve in Mailman 2. But I wonder if we can't do a better job on behalf of list admins in Mailman 3? What I have specifically in mind is to reject the message in Mailman if From (or Sender?) is a list member, *after* checking for "actionable" messages (eg, DSNs for bounce processing). Are there any legitimate reasons for a subscriber to send mail to listname-bounces? The is_subscriber test would avoid 99% of backscatter, as well, I hope.
If people consistently get an automated rejection, most will learn (by now they've figured out that human owners are a lot more flexible and helpful than even the best software == GNU Mailman). Some will scream at the list owner, so probably this feature would need to be an option. :-(
participants (3)
-
Hirayama, Pat -
Mark Sapiro -
Stephen J. Turnbull