[putting on mail admin hat]
On 27 Aug 2019, at 13:00, Billy Youdelman wrote:
I've noticed an annoying trend in how the source addresses of messages
posted to some mailing lists (most notable Apple's) are being
modified.
For instance, Denis Ricard <d.ric...@me.com> posts a note here, but it
shows up as being from
Denis Ricard via mailmate <mailmate@lists.freron.com>
Yes. This is an unfortunately necessary tactic to protect a mailing list
from the negative side-effects of the "DMARC" mechanism of combatting
email forgery. It is often done (as with this list, apparently) only for
senders whose email provider has publishes an active DMARC policy of
"quarantine" or "reject".
The reason for that is because many mailing lists modify message bodies
and/or headers which are usually signed by the DKIM mechanism that DMARC
uses for message authentication. This breaks the message signature. When
the DMARC policy for the domain of the From header is "quarantine" or
"reject", a broken signature can result in mail being rejected,
quarantined, or shunted to a "spam folder," which can ultimately lead to
mailing lists being seen as spam by receiving sites or (in the case of
outright rejections) having subscribers at DMARC-honoring sites being
unsubscribed due to excessive bounces.
I wouldn't know where Denis actually is had he not CC'd himself.
That MAY be a part of the munging being done by Mailman, the mailing
list software that handles this list and does the munging. Moving the
original From address to the Cc or to Reply-To header is one option in
Mailman's munging config.
Is this going to be how addressing will now be handled here?
I can't know for sure, but the *selective* munging strategy or worse
(e.g. everyone switched to digest mode, effectively, with one-message
digests) is going to become pervasive for lists that do things like add
listname/topic tags or add list footers, both of which this list does. I
would not expect it to be switched back.
If so, please count me as one vote to keep things as they were. I
really don't need any more protection from spam (having been using
email since well before junk mail existed, I couldn't possibly get any
more, heh),
It's entirely not about spam reduction. It's about maintaining the
viability of traditional discussion mailing lists in the face of a
tactic pushed mainly by large service providers who offer both mailboxes
and their own captive discussion group alternatives to traditional
discussion mailing lists.
and I'd also like to retain the option of sending a reply to just an
author, directly.
Because the munging appears to include moving the original From address
to a Cc header, you should retain that option.
--
Bill Cole
b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire
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