Receiving spam when posting to list

[Paul Howarth]

STYMA, ROBERT E (ROBERT) wrote:
>>Of course, by the time e-mails to this list leave Red Hat, the mailing
>>list software will have added a Reply-To: <fedora-list at redhat.com>
>>header anyway...
>>
> 
> You do have to be a bit careful with that change.
> 
> This does not look like spam to me.  Spam is unsolicited commercial
> email.

Or, as most people actually involved in anti-spam efforts define it, 
"Unsolicited Bulk Email".

> This looks like the guy went on vacation and forgot to
> turn off delivery at the Fedora site.  Annoying, but not spam.
> 
> My concern is that it the bounced mail will get forwarded to the
> list including back to the guy with the full mailbox.  It will
> be important to make sure the fedora-list mailer recognizes the
> bounce and pitches the email.

The fedora-list mailer is working properly. It rewrites the envelope 
sender address for list emails to fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com before 
distributing the message. This causes bounces from properly-working 
systems to be sent to redhat.com and not the original poster of the 
message. This allows the mail admins at redhat.com to remove addresses 
that persistently bounce from the list.

What is broken is that one particular recipient has a mail system that 
sends "bounces" to the header sender ("From:") address, i.e. in this 
case the original poster of the message. It is their system that should 
be fixed, not the list server.

A snail-mail equivalent might be for a magazine subscription, which 
would typically have something like "If undelivered, please return to 
address X" on the back of the envelope, and a completely different 
address for "Write to the editor" inside the magazine. Misdirected mail 
should be returned to the former of these addresses, not the latter.

Paul.