Hi, On Sun, Jun 29, 2025 at 11:55:56AM +0200, Ralph Aichinger wrote: > I absolutely love bouncing mails in mutt instead of forwarding. I need > some mail on the address I use on my mobile: Just bounce it. I only do > this to my own mail addresses. > > Am I alone in this use case of bounces? Or is this considered an > abuse?
I don't see how sending email to yourself can be considered abusive. It's rare I will use this feature any more because modern email sender authentication measures are more likely to make the mail fail to arrive. For example, if you receive an email that looks like this: From: [email protected] To: [email protected] and you bounce that to [email protected], it will arrive at gmail from your current IP address and with From: address still listed as [email protected]. Since your current network probably isn't authorised to send email for example.com, if example.com uses SPF this will be an SPF failure. It will also likely be a DKIM failure due to some added and changed headers. If both fail then this will additionally be a DMARC failure. In the post-SPF and DKIM world, the ways to redirect / forward emails have changed. I will sometimes use Mutt's bounce feature to re-send email that did not get delivered because I did something wrong. For example, if I email a mailing list that only allows subscribers to post to it but I use the wrong address, my mail is either held for moderation or immediately rejected. I then go into the sent folder, 'e'dit the item to have the correct From: address and then 'b'ounce it to the same place it was originally sent to. This won't be a problem because it will be using an address I am permitted to use from the place I am sending it from. I could instead do a forward but then I'd have to edit away the extra junk that forwarding adds. The number of people using email in any serious manner is dwindling and most users do not know anything about headers or the sender authentication mechanisms. I personally would not try to talk anyone through trying to bounce, forward or otherwise report spam in any way at all unless their email provider has a "report spam" button. I think there are too many fiddly concepts involved with a diminishing return on the investment of learning them. The Debian list archives do have a "this is spam" button on each message, which I think was mentioned earlier in the thread. That's worth using just to hopefully get the message removed from the archives. Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
