[Fwd: Re: rawhide report: 20060207 changes]

[Nigel Metheringham]

I'm a bit reluctant to join a discussion that can have no useful
outcome... but I guess I may as well make it clear that we can't fix
this problem unless someone can intimidate uol.com.br fix their policy

The major problem is that the idiots running the domain send their
antispam confirmation messages to the From: header address rather than
the envelope sender address - this particularly fouls up in the case of
mailing lists where the From: header is very different to the envelope
sender.  If you really have to respond to the From: header (and I'd
maintain that since you are sending a message disposition response you
should be sending it to the envelope address) then you should at least
honour reply-to (which would have fixed the problem in this case).

So the proposed solutions so far...
> 1) This person immediately disables this antispam confirmation

Good, but it won't happen.

> 2) The list administrators kindly remove the person's address

Lucky administrators who get to play whack-a-mole when you can bet they
don't even see the moles themselves but have to be told about them by
other folks...

Blocking them from subscribing runs you into a arms race between them
and us - people will subscribe with aliased addresses and the like.

> 3) I for one, will unsubscribe from all of the fedora lists,

Actually thats the most effective solution - but its unacceptable.

> 4) Having uol.com.br blacklisted via the MTA by the admin of my domain

That only moves the problem around a bit - it solves it for a few people
but leaves the rest of the world with the same problem.  If done on the
RH system it might help because anyone from that domain won't be able to
confirm their subscription (although you may be able to get round that
fairly easily).

> 5) Delete everyone out of the mail list and let everybody re-enroll.

Well that would clean the lists out... but they would resubscribe.
Several others who are more valuable to us would not resubscribe.

> 6) Probe for the idiot concerned.

This just leads you back to (2).  I have done that once in a case where
there was a very active autoresponder on a list, but its last resort
stuff.

Oddly enough it appears that some people get these replies, and others
don't - for example I see no evidence of any connections to my mail
systems from uol.br.com other than a couple of drive by spammers on
dialup.  I certainly haven't got the confirmations - not even failed
attempts to send me confirmations.

The only sensible way to fix this is to deal with uol.com.br and get
them to make their spam control stuff half sane - or go the no spam
route and disconnect from the net.

	Nigel.

-- 
[ Nigel Metheringham           Nigel.Metheringham at InTechnology.co.uk ]
[ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]