Re: Request to mailing list sa-l rejected

At 17:27 2001-10-12 -0700, Andrew Edelstein wrote:
> Anyone else been gettng these when posting to the procmail list?
On the surface, it would seem as if some bonehead(*) apparently subscribed 
ANOTHER list to procmail, and THAT list doesn't accept messages unless it 
is cleartexted as a recipient (generally not a bad policy - I've done the 
same thing on my own lists for years).  Fine.  So, the admin of that list 
IGNORES queries sent to him about this mystery subscription which ask for 
getting sent back the headers for the message which they recieved (I mean, 
since they're notifying YOU that YOUR message isn't being accepted, why 
should they have a problem sending YOU YOUR own message?).
Using those headers, we'd stand a chance of identifying the relay user 
(some idiot(*) doing a simple forward recipe), or if the other list is 
directly subscribed, and then get that address to the listadmin here (I had 
an offlist with Phillip about this very same problem, and he relayed that 
to the listadmin, Guido).
BUT, as per below, the sa-l list IS NOT listed in the subscriber list of 
procmail -- this is some twit(*) FORWARDING the messages.  Thus, for us to 
have any hope of identifying the problem account and either communicating 
to that person that this is a STOOPID thing to do, or just getting them 
unsubscribed to make it go away (though I'm somewhat partial to bouncing 
all of the administrative messages to them), we need the admin of the sa-l 
list to decide that actually RESPONDING to queries sent to them would be in 
the best interest of all involved.
FTR, sa-l is a security administrator's list (<giggle>, oh, the irony). 
ar.inter.net is an Argentina site for inter.net services.  However, the 
list administrative messages are coming through in English, and the list 
administration interface <http://lists.ar.inter.net> presents in English as 
well, so it is doubtful that the list administator doesn't understand the 
text of the queries being sent to them.
> I started getting them a few days ago, but couldn't figure out why. I'm
> guessing someone attempted to subscribe one of the lists I'm on to another
> list but didn't know what they were doing.
Worse, what if they knew full well what they were doing - the 
password-based MailMan list config stuff would prevent another list member 
from doing the footwork to identify the problem address and simply 
unsubscribing it for the good of all.
> An educated guess based on the headers is that it's implemented in ezmlm, but
> it doesn't include the message that it's "rejecting", so I can't tell where
> they're coming from.
It includes the SUBJECT.  That's a far cry better than some bounces I've 
seen, which come from a generic bounce account at some service and say 
"user is unknown", not including ANYTHING from the original message 
(including the subject), or the ADDRESS of the unknown user.  No idea what 
list they're on or anything, and the bounces are often processed 
asynchronously - just because I sent a message five minutes ago doesn't 
mean that the mystery bounce I received has anything to do with it -- the 
last message I sent could have been four or twelve hours before the 
timestamp bounce.
> > Any questions or comments should be directed to the list administrator
> > at:
> >
> >     sa-l-admin(_at_)lists(_dot_)ar(_dot_)inter(_dot_)net
Thus far, such queries have gone unanswered.  Even the message I sent to 
the listadmin as soon as I received a message indicating that someone had 
either subscribed that list to procmail or was relaying.
I checked the procmail administration page, and the procmail list doesn't 
recognize that there is a subscriber as any of the following addresses:
        sa-l(-admin|)@(lists.|)(ar.|)inter.net

In fact, yesterday Guido indicated that a grep of the subscriber list 
failed to turn up a match on "sa-l" or "ar.inter.net", so it would seem 
that the list is NOT directly subscribed (if it is, it has an alias), but 
rather that some dufus(*) has taken it upon themselves to relay the 
messages using a forward rule.
(*) identifiers used to signify my distaste for the poor judgement 
exhibited by the individual responsible for this relaying.  You simply DO 
NOT relay lists without the explicit permission of the listadmin, and in 
fact, the understanding of the list membership at large.
---
 Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

 Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
 Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.

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