procmail
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Servers That Strip X-Loop:

1997-08-06 07:54:00
    I have three ways in my procmail recipes for dealing with potentially
unwanted email.  Questionable mail gets dumped into a possible spam
folder for later examination.  (Occasionally a "real" email winds up in
there.)  Then I have INCLUDERC recipes, "bitbucket" and "reject."  Both
deliver to /dev/null after making customized log entries.  However,
"reject" also sends a notification back to the sender.

    "Reject" specifically includes X-Loop: <my_address>.  Yesterday, in
updating my recipes, I inadvertently put in "reject" where I should
have put in "bitbucket."  Unfortunately, the rejection notice went back
to a mailing list server, which stripped out X-Loop:, setting up an
endless mail loop.  It was discovered before too much damage was done,
and I have pointed out the problem to the postmaster and list owner at
the server site that stripping out X-Loop: nearly caused a disaster.  
(I was trying to unsubscribe from the list, but the server wouldn't 
let me, so I was just discarding incoming posts until the unsubscribe
could go through.)

    Has anyone come up with a method of dealing with this situation,
i.e., with ill-mannered list servers which do obnoxious things to mail
headers?  (One mail server stripped out MIME headers, which caused
unpleasantness on a non-English, non-USASCII list.)

Thanks.
Paul                             <pobart(_at_)access(_dot_)digex(_dot_)net>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

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