Re: Auto-reply not being sent in some cases

On 24/07/12 20:18, Professional Software Engineering wrote:

At 08:31 2012-07-24, Michael Bluejay wrote:

I'm trying to send an autoreply to senders who leave the Subject: field of their message blank, telling them that my server rejects messages with blank subjects (because in my experience, such no-subject messages are either spam or not worth reading).

Pardon my bluntness, but in doing this, YOU are a BIG part of the problem.  If you expect it is spam, chances are, you're "reflecting" a spam event on the victim of forgery - someone whose email address was plastered onto the spam, but who in no way is responsible for the message you're bouncing.  If it isn't a legit sender address, you're just sending your message into the ether (and generating a bounce, which is at least directed to another address of yours for the purpose).  The few people who get a legit message from you about the lack of a subject, well, they're not the spammers, so basically you're harassing them for being clods - but being a bigger clod in doing so.

Honestly, I fail to see an upside here.

Sean,   You wrote the right things regarding spam but I have never seen spam message
with blank subject,  just the opposite.  The blank subject messages that I get arrive from
friends or colleague with simple well known address when they want to send instantly a not
formal message.  So, replay to this address does not make problem.

One more thing the you right,  sending again the original body is bad idea.   I agree with your
arguments and technical notes.

But, the blank subject makes a mess in the inbox threads, so, I do replay and ask for subject
from the sender.

## The spaces include TAB
 :0 * ^Subject:(N/A|FWd?|REp?|(\])|(\[)|[:     ])*$
{
RP=`formail -rtx To:`

:0 bfw
|awk '{next};END{print "Please send me reasonable Subject"}'

:0 hfw
|formail -I"From: uuddii(_at_)eng(_dot_)tau(_dot_)ac(_dot_)il" -I"Content-Transfer-Encoding:" -I"To: $RP"

:0 c
! $RP

:0
junk
}

--udi



<... technical notes ...>

I'd start the list with "replying to spam".  Rethink your strategy here - it's one thing to have a front-end on a list processor that rejects messages from _known_subscribers_ which don't meet posting requirements, but replying to all inbound mail because it lacks a subject will not end well.

---
 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 homepage: http://www.procmail.org/
procmail(_at_)lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)de
http://mailman.rwth-aachen.de/mailman/listinfo/procmail

____________________________________________________________
procmail mailing list   Procmail homepage: http://www.procmail.org/
procmail(_at_)lists(_dot_)RWTH-Aachen(_dot_)de
http://mailman.rwth-aachen.de/mailman/listinfo/procmail