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Hi everyone,
I have just got to the bottom of the lengthy and largely pointless thread
concerning the apparent delivery failure notices. I owe all of you an
explanation, though I have only just got back and only just unbounced
myself due to my lengthy absence of queueing time and hence have only just
begun to receive a day or so's worth of list mail. I don't really know
how long you've been seeing these types of messages, therefore, but I do
recommend that you do as I would do in future - delete them without
further consideration. They reached the mailing list because the sender
fields, which were probably forged, were valid subscriber addresses - so
if you see a very likely real email address in the sender field with a
subject line such as that, it's a fake. You know they don't apply to you,
especially if you got the list mail you sent, so don't worry about it, and
certainly don't storm the list with discussion about it. It was this
latter which prompted me to give the matter closer investigation in the
hopes of perhaps putting a stop to it (yes, that's right - the
discussion).
First of all, the actual cause was one or more (or perhaps just the one,
under different IP addresses) customers who were, by the looks of it,
infected with some sort of worm which generated these messages. I admit
that none of them look particularly dangerous or threatening, but there's
no doubt that forgery was involved, so that spam and viruses (and almost
certainly the latter) seem to be the only candidates. Some messages like
these are actually generated by legitimate programs such as MailWasher's
so-called bounce function, though sender fields are not usually forged,
and the practice is both pointless (since anyone but the most basic mail
user can see through the pretense) and possibly harmful (since spam and
virus headers are forged, so replying or bouncing to it can be detrimental
to one or more users or domains and can just add to the problem). The IP
addresses belong to Pacific Bell, whose abuse desk has been notified. The
complaints were copied to PulseData, though it is well understood that
they cannot in this position do anything about it by simply administering
the mailing list (and that to prevent it from happening in the future, the
mail system administrator must prevent mail from the IP addresses, not
reject mail based on possibly legitimate sender fields or envelope as is
possible with Mailman's interface).
So, guys, please just chill and try not to react violently or in surprised
fashion (and in the form of a large thread of near-identical messages) by
these things. Mailman, which runs this list, manages bounces
automagically - I myself was a victim of this excellent automagic. The
errors notify is an address designed to feed Mailman with bounces
generated by mail system software due to improper deliveries, the result
of which will be user notification and inevitable unsubscription, all
handled automagically and without the need for human involvement.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
- --
Thought for the day:
Book (n): a utensil used to pass time while waiting
for the TV repairman.
Sabahattin Gucukoglu
Phone: +44 20 88008915
Mobile: +44 7986 053399
http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/
Email/MSN: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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