[Mailman-Users] bounces SMTP error 554

Sat Apr 22 23:47:28 EDT 2017

On 04/22/2017 07:30 PM, Jim Dory wrote:
> I have a couple members of our list whose remote mail servers reject some
> of our messages because of what appears to be text formatting in the
> messages. Usually MS Office formatting. I get a bounce back ala:
> 
> "host mtaonline.net.mx1.greymail.rcimx.net [208.80.206.74]
>     SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
>     554 Failed: Malformed MIME field: X-Ham-Report:
>     Spam detection software, running on the system "
> gandalf.nomekennelclub.com", has NOT identified this incoming email as
> spam.  The original message has been attached to this so you can view it or
> label similar future email.  If you have any questions, see root\@localhost
> for details.  Content preview:
>      blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important;
> border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important; padding-left:1ex !important;
> background-color:white    !important; } 3 topping 19 inch pizza$20.00 2
> chicken fajitas and a sala [0xC2] ..."

It looks to me that the issue causing the bounce is not the content of
the message body, but rather it is that spam detection software running
in some MTA in the delivery chain is adding the headers something like

X-Ham-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system
 "gandalf.nomekennelclub.com", has NOT identified this incoming email as
 spam.  The original message has been attached to this so you can view
 it or label similar future email.  If you have any questions, see
 root\@localhost for details.
Content preview: blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0
 !important; border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important; padding-left:1ex
 !important; background-color:white    !important; } 3 topping 19 inch
 pizza$20.00 2 chicken fajitas and a sala [0xC2] ..."

to the message and the added headers are either non-compliant because
they are too long or not properly folded or contain non-ascii characters.

It may be that whatever doing this is rendering the HTML body for the
Content preview: and turning the   html entities into utf-8 0xC2
0xA0 which is the two-byte utf-8 representation of the "no break space",
but if it is putting those bytes (represented perhaps as "[0xC2] ...")
into a Content preview: header, that is definitely a problem and
something at gandalf.nomekennelclub.com is not doing the right thing.

> In googling, it seems I found others have problems with the [OxC2] type
> formatting as well. Just curious if there's much I can do about it or just
> ignore these bounces.

If you don't control gandalf.nomekennelclub.com, there's probably not
much you can do beyond ignoring the bounces if they're infrequent enough
that user's delivery isn't being disabled (or raise
bounce_score_threshold if necessary)

> Here's the original source of that particular message:
> 
> Sent from My iPhone
> 7=C2=A0 ------=_Part_2280092_117074804.1492908307810 Content-Type:

It's hard to tell a lot from this without seeing the actual raw message
without it's being wrapped, folded, whatever by your MUA. Note that the
initial "7=C2=A0 " part looks like a quoted-printable encoding,
presumably from the text/plain alternative part that corresponds to the
"7 </div> " at the end of the html alternative part below.

> text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <html xmlns="
> http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
> xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"><head><!--[if gte mso
> 9]><xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings><o:AllowPNG/><o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--></head><body>
> <style type="text/css" scoped> blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left:
> 0 !important; border-left:1px #715FFA solid !important; padding-left:1ex
> !important; background-color:white !important; } </style>3 topping 19 inch
> pizza<div>$20.00</div><div><br></div><div>2 chicken fajitas and a
> salad </div><div>$12.00</div><div><br></div><div>Bacon cheese
> burger </div><div>$10.00</div><div><br></div><div>Nome
> Nachos </div><div>$12.00</div><div><br></div><div>443-7992<br><br><br>Sent
> from My iPhone 7 </div> </body></html>
> ------=_Part_2280092_117074804.1492908307810--
> --===============6170515499548786613== Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Content-Disposition: inline

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan