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 w...@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 -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
