Re: yet another broken mailer (virus alert)

From: Roman Czyborra (czyborra@dds.nl)
Date: Fri Jul 31 1998 - 11:45:04 EDT


Sarasvati wrote:

> Oh, Adrian! Why indeed is the Unicode mailing list a magnet for
> people with broken mailers? That is a very good question! I have
> taken the liberty of removing the offending otsgroup.nl subscriber
> from the list. If you know others with broken mailers, please ask
> them to go elsewhere to wreak havoc; we've already got more than our
> fair share.

Einar Indridason answered:

> One possible reason is that the "Reply-To:" header is set to point
> to the list itself? For more details see:
> <http://www.unicom.com/FAQ/reply-to-harmful.html>

I think that even more important than the Reply-To: is the SMTP
envelope From pointing back to the list in this case. The
Return-Path: <unicode@unicode.org> is instructing the mailer daemon
to notify the whole list if only my mailbox flows over. The header
Errors-To: uni-bounce@unicode.org is not mentioned in RFC 821 and
explicitly discouraged by RFC 2076. This has probably been discussed
again and again in news:comp.mail.list-admin.*

I think the root of the problem is that Macs or Windows PCs are being
exploited as servers and not up to it. There is excellent standard
mailinglist software for Unix servers like SmartList or Majordomo.

Besides that, I do not like the header munging done by the list
exploder because it throws away important information. Given the
steady amount of traffic on the unicode list I would love to see it
attached to an own newsgroup comp.std.unicode

Greetings, Roman http://czyborra.com/



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