On Fri, May 09, 2025 at 02:15:15PM -0700, jdow wrote: > On 20250509 06:14:59, Matija Nalis wrote: > > While I'm not familiar with RBBS specifically, other BBS software I > > used (like PCBoard) did guarantee message delivery. Only way a > > Or the recipient could never get around to reading it.
Of course, but that is not what we were talking about. The issue was whether the message was delivered to recipient mailbox; NOT whether they've opened it, or whether they've read it, or whether they've understood the content, or whether they've acted upon the content in a way that sender wished, > I will give you one thing, the post office supposedly always delivers. But, > they don't. Well, post office around here definitely does not always deliver, not even in theory. There is even add-on for registered mail with return receipt which you may decide to pay extra for; post office then must deliver a signature proof of recipient where recipient identified with their national ID card, or a proof of non-delivery. Without that, it is just best-effort. YMMV. > Thieves get into mailboxes. Sure, and cyber-criminals can hack your computer and delete/encrypt your mailbox (or more likely your whole hard drive) after you've downloaded messages too, but before you could get a chance to actually read it. But whether your mailbox was read (or deleted) by someone (authorized or not) other than intended recipient, is yet another different subject, better suited for some other list. > And recognized spam finds its way into the trash "received" but > unread. Sure, but how is that related? You've configured your system to classify something as spam, and you may (or may not) decide to read (or at least skim) your spam folder (if it exists) occasionally for FP. What you decided to do (manually or automatically) with that e-mail is separate from fact that the e-mail was in fact delivered to your server (IOW, after your server confirmed SMTP with '200 Ok', it becomes fully your responsibility) This being spamassassin-users list, I'll assume most of us here are in control of what happens to incoming messages classified (or missclassified) as spam. If you want confirmation that the the e-mail was indicated as actually OPENED by the user, sender and recipient MUAs should support MDNs as defined by e.g. RFC 8098 (STD 85). That should give you more-or-less equivalent of registered postal mail with return receipt. That RFC also mentions limitations (which should be obvious, but better to spell it out) of e.g. disposition-type = "displayed" by saying it means: "The message has been displayed by the MUA to someone reading the recipient's mailbox. There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.", as well as other issues related to it (like possible forgeries, privacy issues, non-repudiation, mail bombing, etc.) > things could go wrong. Do you presume PCBoard had no bugs or is > that a demonstrated fact? PCBoard certainly had bugs, but even after many years of using it I have never experienced such a bug leading to submitted message not being delivered, nor have I ever heard of that happening to other sysops or users in the country, or even wider. Thus, lacking any evidence to the contrary, I'll presume there wasn't one (or at the very least, that if it existed it was extremely rare occurance). Contrast that to e-mail, where anybody who has been using it for a month will likely be well aware of delivery issues by personal experience. > 'nuf said on my part. Take your parting shot if you will. Anyway, it is getting too off-topic, so while I'd like to chat up about good old days where much more love and care seem to have gone into writing software and checking it actually works, I'll drop the subject here not to bore other users. Please contact me directly via E-mail (ha!) if you feel the need to respond, and it is not related to spamassassin. Thanks for your understanding. -- Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.
