Forum OpenACS Q&A: New message header format causing spam

1: New message header format causing spam

Posted by Tom Jackson on 02/12/03 06:38 PM

Hey I like the new message headers, but now after sending one message I have three spams from MTAs sending me message failures, delay notices and other junk:

1:

The original message was received at Wed, 12 Feb 2003 11:49:44 -0500
from mx1.redhat.com [172.16.48.31]

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
bounce
    (reason: 550 5.1.1 <bounce@redhat.com>... User unknown)
    (expanded from: bounce)

------------------------------------------------------------
2:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at aast.edu.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<ahmed@aast.edu>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path: <tom@rmadilo.com>
Received: (qmail 29380 invoked from network); 12 Feb 2003 16:44:23 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO openacs.org) (208.184.248.88)
  by aastmt1.aast.edu with SMTP; 12 Feb 2003 16:44:23 -0000
Received: (qmail 22886 invoked from network); 12 Feb 2003 16:45:01 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO ny04.openforce.net) (208.184.248.88)
  by 208.184.248.88.openforce.net with SMTP; 12 Feb 2003 16:45:01 -0000
To: ahmed@aast.edu
From: "Tom Jackson" <tom@rmadilo.com>
Subject: [OpenACS Development] Re: Bugtracker Summary Bar: are the numbers current?
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 16:45:01 GMT
Reply-To: openacs.org mailer <notification-79286-2960@openacs.org>
Precedence: bulk
Sender: notifcations-admin@openacs.org

Forum: OpenACS Development
Thread: Bugtracker Summary Bar: are the numbers current?
Author: Tom Jackson <tom@rmadilo.com>

It seems to be working fine now, in both Netscape 7.0 and IE. Oh well, 
it works, great!

--------------------------------------------------------
3:

This is a warning message only.
  Your message remains in the server queue,
  the server will try to send it again.
  You should not try to resend your message now.

Message delivery to '<igb@igb.net>' delayed
LOCAL module(account igb@igb.net) reports:
 account is full (quota exceeded)



----------------------------------------------------------

2: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 1)

Posted by David Walker on 02/12/03 06:53 PM

Shouldn't the web site be processing the bounced mails and marking bad mailboxes in the system instead of sending the bounce messages to the poster?

3: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 1)

Posted by Tom Jackson on 02/12/03 06:56 PM

I think the Reply-to and From headers are mixed up. Why would I want to reply to the notification bot?

4: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 3)

Posted by Tilmann Singer on 02/12/03 08:12 PM

Mat Kovach just posted a solution to this which will going to be applied soon hopefully.

https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=79109

Tom: Replying to the notification bot makes sense for forums for the case when the reply-by-email functionality is enabled. I don't know how mailing lists _should_ handle this but some handle it the same way, e.g. Reply-To is set to the list address (and there are some people who have fanatic opinions about the right settings).

5: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 4)

Posted by Steve Manning on 02/13/03 06:53 PM

One of the most noticable absences for me is message threading. My mail client has message threading enabled on the folder for my subscribed OpenACS messages but I don't see any threading as the In-Reply-To header is not implemented.

Are there any plans to implement the In-Reply-To header?

6: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 5)

Posted by Bart Teeuwisse on 02/13/03 08:23 PM

Steve,

In-Reply-To headers require a redesign of the notifications package. Our recent changes improve upon the headers but can't achieve everything without an overhaul of the notifications package.

Such an overhaul would require all packages that depend on notifications to change too. Matt mentioned that he would like to further improve notifications but I don't know what his time table is.

/Bart

7: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 6)

Posted by Tilmann Singer on 02/13/03 08:32 PM

You would need the In-Reply-To and References header, and a Message-Id generation in acs-mail-lite for a start. The latter is implemented in Mat's modified acs-mail-lite package. I and propably others are interested in this also, so if Mat can't finish it me or someone else will pick it up for sure.

8: Re: New message header format causing spam (response to 1)

Posted by Steve Manning on 02/15/03 03:35 PM

Thanks guys. It sounds like the threaded messages is a possibility with some reworking. I'm still new to the OpenACS game but I'll help out where I can.

Steve