At 07:11 AM 8/26/97 +0900, Mitsuru Furukawa wrote:
R> > > >X-UIDL: f2aa304aecd64edd84e682586e28b948
R> > >
R> > > The mere presence of this header causes the message to be ditched
on my
R> > > system.
Whmmmmmm. Interesting.
Actually, I have never seen emails _without_ X-UIDL header
among those received thru POP client including this procmai list.
I thought it was just a plain header created by POP server
for unknown reason.
For the record - your own post doesn't include this header when I recieved
it from the list on a mailer which DOES NOT insert the header. And it got
past my spam filter, so obviously it wasn't recieved through sendmail with
the header either. Now, check your own post and see if the header is
there. If it is, then your client is locally adding the header.
<twilight zone theme music>
Three things to mention here in clarification of my original statement:
1. I did have the clause "in my case" - within the parameters of the
mail
I get, I have never recieved a legitimate email containing this header,
while it is FREQUENTLY part of spam.
2. Someone wondered how I could say that I know I haven't had false
positives on MY mail if I'm ditching the messages. Well, I don't actually
/dev/null my spam - I mailbox it for later verification (such as for
passing through improved spam filters).
3. Some POP clients (Netscape and Pegasus are two I know of) apparently
add this field as part of their stored message (you see it locally, but it
wasn't transmitted that way) -- it is a separatley requested/generated
header from the mail server (used to uniquely identify the message for
storage/retrieval purposes). I prefer the way Eudora handles it -- since
the field IS NOT PART OF THE MESSAGE, it IS NOT STORED WITH THE MESSAGE.
Eudora users can check the LMOS.DAT file and see the 32-character X-UIDL
values for each of the messages (if you have a configuration for leaving
messages on the server). In any event, this header shouldn't normally
appear in the message header when procmail gets it from sendmail -
excepting when it is spam, or somebody forwarding a message which has the
header inserted for no good reason.
However, as someone noted to me off-list, there have been instances where
some people have had this header in legit email (some moderated list or
another -- I would presume the moderator was using a client which added the
header locally, then was forwarding the message - thus adding the header).
Your mileage may vary, but I encourage anyone who is actively filtering
spam to at least make a COPY recipe to dump a copy of the message into a
folder to see what type of messages they're getting that contain this header:
:0c:
* ^X-UIDL:.*
uidl-folder
After a few weeks, check the content of this folder and make your own
decisions on the implications of X-UIDL. In the meantime, it shouldn't
affect your normal mail delivery.
---
Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies. I'll get my copy from the list.
Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering
Post Box 2395 / San Rafael, CA 94912-2395