Re: Your Password Reset Link from CorrLinks
Hello,
On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 10:55:44AM +0300, Reco wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 02:30:48AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Thursday 21 February 2019 01:14:03 Web@corrlinks.com wrote:
> > > <dumb spammer link was here>
> >
> > Whats worse is that my isp is rightfully rejecting some of this bs as
> > spam, but I get the threatening msgs from the debian server, threatening
> > to unsuscribe me for the bounces.
>
> You do not bounce to the list - [1]. Yes, even if it's spam.
> They will excommunicate you if you insist on bouncing to the list.
Before we get carried away here, I highly suspect that Gene is talking
about their mail server rejecting the mail during the SMTP conversation,
which is a correct thing to do if the mail is unwanted. This doesn't
generate what we would typically refer to as a bounce.
However, since the SMTP conversation is with Debian's list server,
Debian's list server then warns Gene that mail it has tried to deliver
to Gene has been rejected. Multiple such rejections would lead to the
list server deciding that Gene's account has become invalid, and the
automatica unsubscription of Gene from this list. Again, no actual
bounces here, and everyone involved is behaving reasonably.
Rejecting unwanted email during the SMTP connection is the correct thing
to do, but it is pointless rejecting mail from known list servers as
they are not in a position to do anything about that and repeated
rejection of email will lead to them unsubscribing you. So Gene might
like to find way to establish when the peer is a list server and just
discard the mail in that case. Or deliver it to some sort of quarantine
area.
Ideally of course, the Debian list server would have spotted that this
particular email is not useful for the debian-user list and not accepted
it in the first place. This is really hard though, because this email is
not spam. Unless "spam" is something you define as "email I don't want".
This email appears to be from a legitimate and real service, and
although we as humans can see that it would never be likely to be of
interest to debian-user, it's hard for a computer program to do that.
What seems to have happened here is that some other human has decided
to prank the list by putting the list's address into that web site.
So, since it is the case that there is often going to be email that
Debian's list server fails to notice is inappropriate but the user's own
mail server does (because the user knows more about what they are willing
to accept), it would be better for the user not to reject the list
server's mail if possible, or else accept that a spate of such
rejections may result in unwanted unsubscription from the list.
I don't think it's fair to suggest that Debian's list server is at fault
for accepting this email, because as mentioned it's not spam, it's just
off-topic, and furthermore is likely the result of deliberate pranking
by a human. Expecting Debian's list server to detect that with no prior
information seems a bit much.
Certainly as you suggest people could contact listmaster@ with a pointer
to this thread and ask for future mail from corrlinks.com to be rejected
though, as it would seem such mail would never be relevant.
Cheers,
Andy
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