At 20:25 2002-09-10 +0100, Alan Clifford did say:
The main problems with it, in my opinion, is it has no checking for
mailloops and it sent an email to me when I hadn't emailed you. I am, at
the moment, an enthusiast for the autoresponder but it needs a lot of
thought.
A LOT of thought. Unfortunatley, most people employing autoresponders lack
sufficient thought processes to be able to invest many of their few brain
cycles into thinking about it, which is why many of us despise
autoresponders so.
One CAN have loads of fun with braindead autoresponders - try using the
autoresponder's own address, or if it appears to support them, a PLUSSED
address (which can foil basic "is this me" checks). Nuking autoresponders
that abuse mailing lists can be quite rewarding, and usually results in the
user abandoning the braindead mechanism.
I have installed a pass-through address for mine but I am reluctant to
post it into this list as there is a small minority who insist on
replying as well as posting to the list, and then the passthrough address
would be available for the spam address harvesters.
I have "clean" mailing lists which filter before spam (but after twits),
and "regular" mailing lists (lists that let anyone post or in any even end
up with spam on them), which filter after aggressive spam filtering.
Here's an example of how to deal with unwanted carbons:
####################
# Procmail discussion list
:0
* ^Sender: procmail-admin(_at_)lists\(_dot_)rwth-aachen\(_dot_)de
{
:0c:
| formail -A"${XMBHEAD} PROCMAIL" >> $DEFAULT
:0:
|gzip -9fc >> procmail.gz
}
# Then ditch carbons and the like. Note how this is conditioned upon the
# LIST also being addressed - but the ABOVE recipe would have caught an
# actual list-delivered message - this would be a direct copy.
# No thanks.
:0:$TEMP/cc_list$LOCKEXT
*
^TO(procmail(_at_)lists\(_dot_)rwth-aachen\(_dot_)de|procmail-users(_at_)procmail\(_dot_)org)
|gzip -9fc >> cc_list.gz
Agreed, I'd just as soon NOT receive the extra copy in the first place, esp
since on busy lists and topics, too many subsequent followups reply to all
the previous recipients, and it gets ugly from there when you can't even
bow out of a topic you're no longer interested in.
Now, instead of merely archiving the carbons (for review if it becomes
necessary), one can use the same conditions, but brace the action (and
remove the lock flag from the flags above the condition of course), and
fire off a copy or two of the crap at the sender:
{
# argh - idiots insist on carbon-copying me. Fine I'll send them
# a copy of their own crap, from themselves. We add an X-loop
# header so it doesn't cause us grief if it does loop back.
# sets this sender to the original sender. Heh.
# My eudora rules will still mark the message as To: me, but I'll
# rest knowing that the twit who cc'd me gets a mystery copy of their
# own crap.
# (I extract SENDER centrally in my .procmailrc, see the example in
# my sandbox).
:0c
* ! ^FROM_MAILER
* ! ^X-Loop:[ ]*special_loop_flag
* ! SENDER ?? (my_own_domain_and_perhaps_others)
| formail -i "X-Loop: special_loop_flag" -I "X-Envelope-To:" \
-I "X-Envelope-To:" | $SENDMAIL -f$SENDER $SENDER
# send a *SECOND* copy to the twit as well!
( a verbatim copy of the above recipe )
:0:$TEMP/cc_list$LOCKEXT
|gzip -9fc >> cc_list.gz
}
I don't do that on this list, but I do it on another, and the bozos
eventually clue in. That, or I cease to reply to their questions.
---
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.
_______________________________________________
procmail mailing list
procmail(_at_)lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)DE
http://MailMan.RWTH-Aachen.DE/mailman/listinfo/procmail