Majordomo, owner-list email address and anti-spam

I just discovered a new problem with majordomo owner list address ...

In DA, [email protected] is forwarded to owner-site address (mandatory, no choice).
This was just fine up to the moment some servers are testing the origin of email to decide if it is spam or not (with sender and/or return-path in smtp headers)

The way they do it is to send a request to the sender.

BUT in majordomo with DA, the return-path and Sender by default are [email protected] and, as this is an alias, it does not answer to anti-spam mechanism...

If you fill-in the field "reply-to" in DA panel, you will have a "reply-to" header added with the address you type in, but return-path and Sender are still owner-list

I don't know which policy I have to adopt.
-> I cannot ask users to change address because of email provider promoting anti-spam
-> I cannot change majordomo settings (As I am not sure that changes would not be wiped out by a next DA upgrade)
-> I cannot stay with some users of majordomo not receiving mails any longer
-> I cannot ask servers of customers to change the anti-spam scheme

None of these (solving the problem) is really very convenient.


Any suggestion ?

Maybe a change in the way majordomo is configured by DA would also solve the problem. If DA did not make a forwarder owner-list to owner-site but create a true pop3 owner-list, it should solve all the problems, even if the owner site has to create a new account in his email client.
By the way, this could solve another problem : very often in non-profit association, list owers are different persons ...



Michel Lo

koudou said:

BUT in majordomo with DA, the return-path and Sender by default are [email protected] and, as this is an alias, it does not answer to anti-spam mechanism...

Click to expand...

"[email protected]" is a perfectly acceptable way to identify the return path for a list mailing. It must be an address at which mail can be received.

Aliases are perfectly acceptable ways for mail to be received, and in fact the smtp protocol doesn't define a way to determine whether an email address is an alias or a mailbox, so there's no real way an anti-spam mechanism could make that determination.

We've been sending out hundreds of list emails daily using [email protected], as our return path, and owner-list has always been an alias without exception. We've never had one identified as spam.

Maybe a change in the way majordomo is configured by DA would also solve the problem. If DA did not make a forwarder owner-list to owner-site but create a true pop3 owner-list, it should solve all the problems,

Click to expand...

It shouldn't solve any problem, because the problem doesn't exist and has never existed in our experience, nor have I ever seen it mentioned in any mailing list or forum where mailing-list owners get together to discuss problems. I don't see how the problem even could exist, since as I wrote above, there's no ability in SMTP to see the difference between an alias and a mailbox.

I suspect your problem is something else. Can you give us a specific example showing the problem?

By the way, this could solve another problem : very often in non-profit association, list owers are different persons ...

Click to expand...

I would like to see DirectAdmin allow us to define who owner-list is forwarded to. While you can do it now, you have to be able to log in to the system as root and use a text-editor, to do it.

Jeff

Here is the problem. It does exist as when I try to send an email to [email protected], it works ...

Michel Lo


This is the Postfix program at host blackbird.naos.com.

####################################################################
# THIS IS A WARNING ONLY. YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE. #
####################################################################

Your message could not be delivered for 4.0 hours.
It will be retried until it is 2.0 days old.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

The Postfix program

<[email protected]>: host smtp-fr.libertysurf.net[213.36.80.73] said:
451 <[email protected]> unable to verify address (in reply to MAIL
FROM command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; blackbird.naos.com
Arrival-Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:56:27 +0200 (CEST)

The key is to find out how smtp-fr.libertysurf.net is verifying the address.

The proper way would be on a remote address to just verify the domain exists. That test passes fine.

The only other acceptable way would be to try to send an email to the address, and then quit after the "rcpt to" is accepted. That works fine as well; here are examples of this method sent to both your MX servers:
BUT...
The key is the error message that smtp-fr.libertysurf.net is experiencing:

<[email protected]>: host smtp-fr.libertysurf.net[213.36.80.73] said:
451 <[email protected]> unable to verify address (in reply to MAIL
FROM command)

Click to expand...

If they're getting an error from their mail from command that would be because you, for some reason, are refusing email from them.

If you can't figure out why you're doing that, then you'll have to get in touch with their admin or have an experienced admin do the debugging for you while logged into your system and while in contact with their admin.

Jeff