On Wed, 25 Feb 1998 14:11:12 -0500, psmith(_at_)oakland(_dot_)edu wrote:
This whole idea of bouncing mail from unfamiliar addresses falls apart
quickly if you apply that to mail you receive from a mailing list. I
basically won't use this kind of filter until I get that problem solved.
I'm not expecting list participants to have to register with me -- that
would be self-centered and presumptuous, and fundamentally wrong.
Era Eriksson (era(_at_)iki(_dot_)fi) mentioned something about using the
FROM_MAILER
procmail qualifier, but I guess I'm not sure how that would consistently
trigger on a mailing-list mail and not on others (Era, perhaps you can
elaborate).
It's just a simple heuristic, and not something I'd rely on, but it's
a starting point. Bottom line is there will always be badly configured
/ "alternative" list servers out there so I don't think you stand a
chance of finding a smallest common denominator between them all. All
in all, something like
:0
* ! ^FROM_DAEMON
* ^FROM_MAILER
{ hallelujah, it's a list message }
is all the time I'd spend on a Procmail solution.
I also suggested that you don't subscribe your password-protected
address to any mailing lists. This is serious. Many modern MTA:s will
allow you to use "plussed" addresses on mailing lists, so you'd
subscribe psmith+procmail(_at_)oakland(_dot_)edu to this list and not tell
anyone. Then you can be sure anything coming in with the +procmail is
from the list. (If Procmail is your LDA, the plussed part will be
available in $2. If you're invoking Procmail via .forward, you'll have
to rely on the headers, but as Sean remarked recently, anything that
gets BCC:ed to +this+ list can rather safely be assumed to be spam.)
You can still arrange to post your own messages to the list from the
password-protected address so that that is what people will see in the
headers of your messages to the list; that's what I do on all the
lists I'm on (for other reasons, but at least that goes to show it's
possible.)
(As a matter of fact, the whole story is that iki.fi would rather not
have mailing lists routed via their server, so I get all lists
directly to my university account. Getting permission to post as
era(_at_)iki(_dot_)fi has required me to ask the list maintainer to make an
exception for me on many lists, but it's a one-time thing and as more
and more people are using "virtual" addresses, I think most list
owners will try to make this an automatically configurable option,
sooner rather than later.)
/* era */
On "plussed" addresses:
<http://www.netusa.net/~eli/faqs/addressing.html>
(Yeah, I know Eli's got a qz.to domain name now but I'm too lazy to
get the new URL right now.)
--
Paparazzi of the Net: No matter what you do to protect your privacy,
they'll hunt you down and spam you. <http://www.iki.fi/~era/spam/>