Re: Kind reminder: please don't reply to and/or quote spam, ever

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

On Mon 20 Apr 2020 at 19:36:40 (+0000), Russell L. Harris wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 10:53:47AM -0500, David Wright wrote:
[…]
> > It's always seemed futile to me to bounce an entire message back to
> > the sender: after all, they sent it, they know what was in it, and
> > have probably retained a copy (if it's non-trivial).
> > its usefulness if you work within a group of cooperating colleagues,
> > where each is taking responsibility for different aspects.
> 
> > Otherwise, forwarding seems more appropriate and polite. But there are
> > two forms of fowarding (at least in mutt): as a separate attachment,
> > or as part of your own email (like with top-posting). In the latter
> > case (with mutt), you can see that you're only forwarding whichever
> > parts of the original header that you were displaying at the time.
[…]
> As I understand it, BOUNCING or REDIRECTION relays a message in the
> most pristine form available, preserving the header, whereas
> FORWARDING allows you to make changes to the message.  This is (or
> should be) true, irrespective of the mail user agent.  I cannot speak
> with authority regarding the difference between REPLY and FORWARD.
> 
> If I receive spam and wish to report it to my ISP, I BOUNCE the
> message, so as not to disturb the "evidence" or "scene of the crime".

I remain unconvinced. If you forward an email as an attachment, then
its containment in the attachment protects it from modification.
OTOH if you bounce it, the header that you received can be modified,
and have lines added in the normal course of transit through MTAs.

> Likewise, a message which may be criminial in nature (threat,
> extortion, pornography), should be BOUNCED to law enforcement and to
> the ISP, to facilitate tracing.

In addition, if the original email contained a malicious gotcha, you
expose the recipient of the bounced email to the same risk that you
presumably have just avoided.

> A message may be BOUNCED or FORWARDED to anyone, including the sender
> (unless the sender has used a fictitious address, which typically is
> the case with malicious messages).
> 
> Neo-mutt documentation led me to believe that there is a "b" command
> (or something of the sort) for BOUNCE; but I did not find it, perhaps
> because I use the "Classic Dvorak" keymap.  I then discovered that
> commands not tied to a key can be executed with ":exec <commandname>".

or
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/03/msg00924.html

Cheers,
David.