At 12:01 2003-07-03 -0700, Tyler Creelan wrote:
I got this message when I posted to a mailing list that had nothing to
do with this person or company. Could you please stop this autoreplying?
Tellme has already been advised that such autoreplies are inappropriate
(this was over a week ago), so it's nice to see that their IT department
cares that they're annoying the users of a large mail list, many of whose
users are involved in dealing with MAIL ABUSE.
Perhaps if list users remind the tellme.com folks about this problem EACH
TIME it crops up, the tellme people will cave in and do the right
thing. That might involve hiring of a competent mail admin who can
comprehend that what they're doing is *WRONG*.
If you're so inclined, and feel that your email requests may not be
reaching their IT personnel, you might try sending a FAX message to them:
1 650/930-9101 (Mountain View, California, USA)
The following information was offered up to the chaps at tellme.com (this
is verbatim except for the omission of a quoted passage which was being
replied to):
---
A standard _bounce_ can accomplish the same thing, and works within the
framework of discussion list management.
in sendmail virtusertable:
zifa(_at_)tellme(_dot_)com ERROR:5.1.1:550 User is no longer employed at tellme. If
you have business matters, please contact ronnb(_at_)tellme(_dot_)com
THEN, the MTA properly generates a bounce, following all the standard rules
as to who that bounce is delivered to. Lists should drop the subscription
because it bounces with the 5.1.1 (User Unknown) error, and human readers
can recognize why the address isn't in operation anymore.
This is much preferrable to sending autoreplies to everything which arrives
- including correspondance which is arguably not addressed directly to the
individual at your firm, since their address doesn't appear in the To:
field. Discussion list messages tend to be delivered via BCC - they also
tend to have Precendence: junk or Precedence: bulk, which are additional
signs that the message doesn't merit an autoreply.
---
It is not without considerable irony that tellme.com is a company which
deals with interactive voice response systems - i.e. they're supposedly in
the business of efficient automated communications.
It is a bummer that they can't sort out how to properly handle email, and
instead are throwing autoreplies out to people who have no control over the
fact that their user subscribed to a mailing list. None of us can remove
that user - only the absent listadmin and the company themselves, who could
send an uns*bscribe message on behalf of their user, or hope that
eventually a series of LEGITIMATE BOUNCES will result in the removal of
their user.
BTW, the Ron chap was obviously not the IT person in charge of having set
up the braindead mail config at tellme - he's just the soul to whom Mr.
Zifa's old email contacts are being directed, so don't crawl up his arse
over it. Perhaps though, if he tires of messages such as this, he might
offer up the direct contact address of the IT manager who made the decision
to violate basic email protocols.
---
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.
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