a customer of an ISP i work with recently got mail-bombed by being
subscribed to multiple mailing lists. we've been using procmail as the
final delivery agent for other reasons. the customer doesn't normally have
access to their $HOME directory, but creating a local .procmailrc to filter
out:
Yes, there are a couple programs whose sole purpose is to forge subscribes to
various high-volume mailing lists. Why there is talk on the SmartList list
about 'confirming' subscribes, though since SL sends a copy of the original
message, it's at least easy to see who subscribed you.
what i'd really like to do now is to have the recipe, instead of dumping
everything into the "bulkmail" file, determine a return-address in a
certain preference order. i suspect that it would be something like:
Errors-To:
Sender:
Return-Path:
FROM
the return message might try to do an automatic unsubscribe, probably
followed by some text claiming that the customer was subscribed without
his/her permission.
Perhaps, but most of the Error's to and such are designed to auto unsubscribe
if it bounces.
Why not something like:
EXITCODE=67
(User unknown) before your trap?
This should make Procmail do The Right Thing and bounce an error to the sender
properly.
what i would also like to do is send the message back somewhat in the
nature of the "vacation" program, say every 5 days or so. i don't really
want/need to send a message back to the list maintainer for every message
received.
You may need to bounce all off them with great prejudice like a fatal EXITCODE.
Most auto-unsubscribe mechanisms are designed to take into account transient
mail failures and 'forgive' people who are unable to receive mail for a short
period. So make the failure consistent and sticking and the list software
itself (if it's reasonably intelligent) will auto-unsub them.