At 11:01 AM 2/14/98 -0800, William R. Ward wrote:
I had no intention of offending anyone; I simply find it more
convenient to read mailing lists using news software. I've been doing
this on other mailing lists for some time now, and have never gotten
any complaints.
A shot in the dark, but it might possibly be because the other mailing
lists aren't about mail filtering, where these changes to headers have an
impact on those who may be actively _filtering_ their mail.
I have always filtered "junk/spam/twits/etc" into a file which I can check
later (and I log the events in the procmail log, so I can check what has
occurred), but based on discussions on the procmail list over the last
three years, I know that several people file such messages directly to
/dev/null - it is in fact the most often referenced destination for spam in
sample recipes.
Which means that if your (unannounced) mirror is inadvertantly seen as
spam, they don't see your messages or any of the followups to them - and
can't retrieve them (except via the procmail archives). This is a prime
example of exactly why I choose to file them instead -- I can recover
messages if I want to. Logging them (and crontabbing a mailing of the log
report of spam events) lets me know that in fact I was losing list mail.
Others affected may not even know they've missed list mail, which is a
shame, because I'm sure you, and those who may reply to you, have something
useful to share.
I will see what I can do about modifying my setup so that the headers
are rewritten in the news2mail side of things. In the meantime I will
take care when posting to the procmail list.
I appreciate that, as I imagine others who may believe that the procmail
list should be centric to procmail discussions.
I really don't think it is necessary to use such an inflammatory
tone in pointing this out.
Appologies are due if it sounded like I was chewing you out. I have a
tendancy to be that way in general, and I've had one of those weeks with
mail (new netblock, upline DNS propagation problems, relocated/named mail
secondaries, etc), so coming into my mail system to find that messages from
procmail are suddenly matching basic spam checks just set me off.
Since the beginning of this month alone, I've successfully filtered out six
spams relayed by the procmail list (plus a followup to a spam, which
looking at the message in the spamfile, was in fact carbon copied to the
list AND the spammer). This number alone isn't that significant - except
that it reflects ALL the spams that have come through the list since my
last archive, which means I'm not seeing any spam from Procmail at this
time. I get MANY more spams from other sources, and Procmail is the tool
that makes filtering them out possible.
The simple fact is that as long as I've been BCC-filtering procmail
traffic, I've never - not even once - filtered a valid message from the
list as a result. Every last message relayed through the procmail list
where the list has been BCC'd has in fact been spam. This might not apply
for some messages before I fully implemented this (around Aug of last
year), but experience says that BCC'ing lists is generally a sign of
trouble in the wind (just as is crossposting messages between mailing lists).
---
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