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Re: Pong messages from tom

2002-11-20 16:08:00
On 20 Nov, Charlie Summers wrote:
| At 4:00 PM -0500 11/20/02, LuKreme is rumored to have typed:
| 
| > No, _I_ am receiving a pong message from Tom:
| 
|    Yes, yes, I understand this. You asked, "Just me?" My response was to
| prove that it was NOT "just you," but also the list redistributing those sent
| to it. Since the list was also receiving them, it could not have been "just
| you," hence the response. All of my future comments dealt specifically with
| those messages distributed through the list, ignorhing those sent to you
| externally.
| 
|    That _I_ am not receiving the pongs on posting to the list, I cannot
| explain. Perhaps Allison is filtering my posts to /dev/null?

Or maybe something at your end is stopping them from getting to you. Is
charlie(_at_)lofcom(_dot_)com a deliverable address?  Here's a little more 
info. 
From 11/13 to 11/16, I noticed a bunch of bounces in my sendmail log
from tallison(_at_)tacocat(_dot_)net to 
procmail(_at_)tradersdata(_dot_)com(_dot_)  Mail to that
address is bounced by sendmail as user unknown.  I didn't verify it,
but I'm reasonably sure each one of those bounces would be shortly
after a post to the list.  The count is the same. I believe I bounced
the pong messages (woohoo!). Then, today's pong messages to the list
also came shortly on the heels of my posts. 

Here's my guess.  Tom is using some autoresponder to verify that
sender's addresses are deliverable.  He was at first taking the sender's
address from the From: header, then switched to formail -rt. That would
explain my bounces of last week, and the messages coming to the list
today. Anyone who sets Reply-To: the list would cause formail to return
the list address in Tom's new To: header, and hence the pong message
goes to the list.  For other's who don't set that header, formail uses
the From: header.  If Tom were using formail -r (no -t), then I believe
formail would choose the Return-Path: which would be the list again. 

Of course only Tom can answer for sure what's going on.  But if I'm
right, this is another illustration of a half-baked autoresponder run
amok. List mail should NEVER trigger an autoresponder.  I'm deliberately
not setting Reply-To: this time to see what happens. I'm guessing it'll
be another message to procmail(_at_)tradersdata(_dot_)com that'll bounce.  If I
were really evil I'd set Reply-To: opt-in(_at_)oin81(_dot_)com, but I'm not.

-- 
Reply to list please, or append "8" to "procmail" in address if you must.
Spammers' unrelenting address harvesting forces me to this...reluctantly.



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