Dear folks on the Arachne and Nettamer Mailing Lists: I have noted with much interest that the Arachne Mailing List does not have a certain particular quirky problem which the Nettamer Mailing List does have.
The problem with the Nettamer Mailing List is that it does not allow one to post messages to the list from a remote server by one modifying his "From:" header so as to indicate that the message is being sent from the address from which one is subscribed. When I am running PINE on my remote server account I can post messages to the Arachne Mailing List if I modify my "From:" header so as to indicate that the message was sent by "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". The message gets posted to the Arachne Mailing List with no problem. Those of you who are subscribers to the Arachne Mailing List may take a look at the full headers on my most recent post to the Arachne Mailing List. You guys will see what I mean. The Nettamer Mailing List has a problem in this regard. The MAILER DAEMON for the Nettamer Mailing List always bounces the messages back to me at my remote server email address with a note saying that in order to post messages to the Nettamer Mailing List list I must be a subscriber. The Nettamer Mailing List does not recognize me as a subscriber when I appropriately modifify my "From:" header in the same manner as for posting to the Arachne Mailing List. I do not have a problem posting to the Nettamer List as long as I do it directly from my real ISP and I use my real "From:". Setting up a mailing list so as not to accept messages from those who have modified their "From:" so as to reflect the email address of a legitimate subscriber is a good feature or a bad feature? The advantage of such a feature is that it discourages spamming and immitative deception and other obnoxious behaviors. The disadvantage is that the feature disallows perfectly legitimate posters from posting to the list from their Unix shell accounts simply by modifying their "From:". A legitimate subscriber may solve this problem by subscribing to the mailing list from his remote server email address too. The problem with resorting to this solution is that he would be advertising also the email address of his remote server account to the spammers who harvest email addresses from the mailing lists. I wonder what might be the majority opinion as to whether a mailing list ought to have a feature for disallowing one to post to a mailing list by modifying his "From:" header so as to indicate the email address of a legitimate subscriber. There are several pros and cons to consider. All the best, Sam Heywood -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser: http://browser.arachne.cz/
