> Replying to the return-path is wrong for a "mail user agent", of which
> an auto-responder is almost always acting as (eg. when the auto-
> responder is used to handle "out-of-the-office" types of messages,
> "info" mailbox replies, and so on).
Hmm... most of the discussions I've come across on the 'net seem to favor
the return-path only. But I understand your points. Does anyone else here
have a different view of this?
What about this scenario: my software allows users to issue challenges
to unrecognised addresses. Once a challenge is answered, the address is
remembered and isn't challenged again. Works great to eliminate spam.
Which address should it challenge and remember? Reply-to? From? Currently
it deals with Return-path and it works well.
The challenge system is subject to the same autoresponder rules, by the
way, so they can't accidentally challenge a mailing list.
> You might want to add "listserv@*", "mailer@*", "*-relay@*", and
> "*-outgoing@* too.... "listserv@*" is the most critical of course
> (because of L-Soft's idiotic refusal to add a "precedence: list" header).
Thanks, I've added those now. Why on earth would they not want to add
that header?
> > - It won't respond to any message that contains an "x-mailing-list"
> > header or any "list-*" headers.
>
> Is that really necessary? It shouldn't be....
Can't really hurt I figure. I've seen some mailing lists that have these
but are missing a Precedence: header. I suspect they were home-grown things.
> You'll want to be careful how you recognise addresses you've already
> replied to (ignore the comments, etc., parse out multiple addresses,
> etc.) -- that's a feature coming in the almost-released version of my
> program....
No worries, I already parse out the actual addresses from any and all
headers I deal with.
But in the case of multiple addresses - should an autoresponder send to
ALL of them? Seems to me it might be easy to abuse.
> > - The reply message itself is sent with a "Precedence: junk" header and
> > a null return-path. If the customer wants it to be replyable they can
> > add a Reply-to header.
>
> You really don't have to send it with a null return-path. It might be a
> nice option to have in a full-featured auto-responder (mine has it), but
> it should not be the default.
The idea was to avoid mail loops. I suppose it's not an issue unless the
recipient of the autorespodner has a broken autoresponder himself. But
making it a configurable option sounds like a good idea.
Thanks for the response,
Mark
