Hello!
On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 10:26:27AM -0000, Chris Haynes wrote:
[...]
Re: Hannah's problem.
I presume you refer to the mail whose time stamp (in my time zone) is
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 4:58 PM.
In that mail he says:
Just for the record, I'm a "she". Bummer.
Semantically, for automatic forwards it makes more sense that the
original sender gets the error messages. For manual forwards, it makes
sense that the one who did the forward gets the error message. And the
current state of affairs reflects that.
and he then expresses the concern:
How do you deal with automatic forwarding? And with the bounce loop
described?
In my newly-thought-through position I would disagree with him that "the
original sender should get the error messages" where he procedes to equate this
error message with the bounce from the forwarded message.
Just as in the snail mail example I just wrote about, yes. I think the
sender should know that, even while it's not his/her mistake, the mail
didn't get through.
Error messages about message 2 should be dealt with by the forwarder who
initiated that message. The problem is usually to do with a bad end-address.
Now
that address was given to him by the end-recipient who has asked him to do the
forwarding. They have to sort out the problem between themselves.
The original sender knows nothing of the forwarding arrangement. And indeed,
the end-recipient may not wish the originator to know the forwarded address,
for
privacy reasons.
That doesn't work, it doesn't work even now.
I think the error handling should be done in two steps:
1) The forwarder who receives the 'bounce' should attempt to rectify the
problem
himself.
How should that work? The recipient doesn't have any mailbox at the
forwarder's site, except the one with the unconditional forward. Perhaps
the forwarder site doesn't offer any mail retrieval services except
forwarding at all.
So how should the recipient (who might have setup the forward in a wrong
way) be notified?
If the original sender gets a bounce, chances are above zero that s/he
might know an out of band way to contact the recipient (telephone, snail
mail, whatever) to notify the recipient of the configuration problem.
2) If he cannot, he should send a _normal_ message (not a bounce) back to the
2822-Sender explaining the problem and (preferably) enclosing a copy of the
original (pre-forwarding) message, but not revealing any details of the
forwarding arrangements.
Automatic return messages should never be sent to any address other than
the envelope sender for good reasons. So if I modify your suggestion to
read "back to the original envelope sender", this is just a bounce
message. The only remaining difference is that the forwarding site
doesn't expose the forwarding target. But that could be also effected by
changing existing software to not expose any non-initial RCPT TO address
in the bounce at all.
I hope this avoids the 'bounce loop' which Hanna was concerned about, but I've
not thought it through in detail.
And my name is written with a trailing h. It hurts if people seem to be
so blind wrt persons. Again, I'm a *she* and written Hannah with
trailing h, ok?
[...]
Regards,
Hannah.