Mike Scott wrote:
Tony Pursell wrote:
....
By the way, someone mentioned Pegasus mail. This is a free Windows
mailer (which I happen to use). The OOo Send >
Me! Good mailer too, better IMO than TB, but they simply will not port
to linux etc. I'd forgotten about the extras to help it work, sorry.
BTW, I cc'd the OP on my 2 replies. For my pains, I find I'm expected
to jump through hoops set up by something called spamarrest - some
sort of challenge-response clutter. Which I won't do, and which in
fact I treat as spam. Seems kind of counter-productive - ask for
help, then put obstacles in the way; oh well!
But it set me wondering - if he did try to subscribe, would the list
software cope with challenge-response?
Good question! It depends on whether ezmlm considers its confirmation
message to have been delivered, or to have bounced, or to be a special
case which is really neither. If it thinks it was delivered, initially,
the confirmation message would have been sent by the list's help account
(e.g., [email protected]) and would get the whitelist rejection
as the response. But this would go to the correct address for
subscription (with the embedded indirect form of the user's e-mail), and
if it is processed normally the subscription would work, and the Welcome
message would be sent (and rejected) -- and the user would never see
either of these messages. But unless the user had whitelisted the list
(e.g., [email protected]), each of the list messages would result in
a "response" to the list (which would also be sent to the user, and get
rejected, etc.), and we're not seeing those. Here's a quote from
www.openoffice.org/ml_guidelines.html:
*"Whitelisting*
For people who are using "you cannot send me mail unless you are
whitelisted" spam filters: if you subscribe to the OpenOffice.org lists,
you must whitelist the lists yourself. We will not reply to any "please
jump through these hoops to be whitelisted" mails. Such messages will be
treated as bounces, and you may be unsubscribed or ignored. (Taken &
modified shamelessly from LinuxChix.org. <http://www.linuxchix.org/>)"
I very much doubt that these users, in general, are savvy enough to do
this, and that means that the "delivered" path is unlikely -- we'd be
seeing those whitelist demands as list messages, at least sometimes,
unless ezmlm is seeing *these* as bounces or special cases and not
posting them. But they come from a subscribed user.... If they are
treated as bounces, by the way, there would be an automatic unsubscribe
after a certain number of them.
So apparently either the confirmation message is seen as having bounced,
or it is being recognized as a special case. If it looks bounced, the
subscription would fail. That leaves the special case possibility. Now,
since the whole point of these whiltelisting schemes is to keep
automated mailers from working, it seems the only way this could work
would be for ezmlm to get a human into the loop to follow the
whitelisting instructions. That seems very unlikely to me; as above,
this is an unacceptable practice.
Bottom line: the subscription would probably fail, and the user either
would never know why, or would have to deduce the problem, or
investigate and find the above quote -- and determine the correct
address to whitelist.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
