Re: Please, don't reply to spam -- much less on list [was: ግěcůžላኣዝዩ]
On Fri, Jun 27, 2025 at 12:09 AM John Crawley <john@bunsenlabs.org> wrote:
>
> On 26/06/2025 01:00, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 25, 2025 at 03:18:05PM -0000, Greg wrote:
> >> On 2025-06-24, Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> This like sounds like good and important advice, but how do you "bounce the
> >>>> original message"?
> >>>
> >>> By using the "bounce" feature of your MUA. Only good ones have it.
> >>>
> >>>> Does that mean forward the message to the report-listspam?
> >>>
> >>> No. Forwarding and bouncing are different operations.
> >>
> >> One problem for the casual user is that there's bouncing and then
> >> there's bouncing. For most us, bouncing means that the mail server
> >> rejects the email.
> >
> > Yep. That's where the name comes from. It sends the mail back, with
> > as much intact info as possible to allow the mail admin to debug the
> > situation. Bouncing from the MUA does technically the same, so the
> > same name is appropriate.
> >
> >> https://www.activecampaign.com/glossary/bounced-email
> >>
> >> For those in the know like you, it means redirecting the email
> >> anonymously to another recipient.
> >>
> >> I'm familiar with the latter as an Alpine user, BTW.
>
> I think "bouncing" is something that should really be done on a server, not by a user email agent, even a "good" one.
I think if you ask the hardcore email folks who hang out on the
[emailcore] or [mailmaint] lists at the IETF, they would say something
like a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) or Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) are the
ones that deliver Non-Delivery Reports (NDR), and not Mail User Agents
(MUA).
The folks on the IETF list tend to be very precise when discussing all
things email. I've seen them tell folks to go read a RFC so the person
in the discussion can get the terms they are using correct. ("forward"
versus "relay" tends to trigger them because they are not the same
thing in email-speak).
> Even so, "resend" is often available, either built-in or as a plugin, using the "Resent*" fields:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.6
>
> The Debian Wiki has these suggestions for how to deal with spam:
> https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ListMaster/ListArchiveSpam#nominate
> and
> https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/ListMaster/FAQ#The_lists_are_spam-laden.2C_I_want_to_help_you
>
> So it looks as if resending a spam message to report-listspam@lists.debian.org is OK, although "bouncing" the message back to the server is very much not, even if your MUA can do that.
Jeff
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