Re: [exim] Filter Help

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Author: W B Hacker
Date:  
To: exim users
Subject: Re: [exim] Filter Help
steven_nikkel@??? wrote:
>> ACK - but no real harm to block ALL 'noreply@'
>>
>> .. especially (per below) if you only have the one anyway..
>>
>> None of them will find a place to land...
>>
>>
>> Since you have only the one 'issue' and a mixed situation where there IS a
>> known
>> correspondent that is (mostly) responsive, why not set your MUA, rather
>> than
>> Exim, to map that particular 'noreply@' to the known-good address as if
>> it were
>> a handle, abbreviation, or alias.
>>
>> Worst-case you might irritate that invididual/organization on something
>> they
>> really did NOT want to hear back on.
>>
>> But no more badly than if you had simply read the headers (perish *that*
>> меньшинство thought...) and decided to compose a manual
>> response anyway...
>>
>> HTH,
>>
>> Bill
>>
>
> I'd rather not block all noreply@ as it seems like overkill


On the 'outbound'? How so?

> and who knows
> what I might break.


Whom? Most mailadmins.

What?

- Outbound: Nothing, really. Can't get anywhere anyway.

CAVEAT: Despite the term, nothing prevents an(other) Mailadmin from making
'noreply@' a valid user on his MTA, so sometimes these CAN be read. But you are
safe in presuming NOT, 'coz that's wot the sender SAID they intended for it.

- Inbound: Blocked traffic from certain types of announce/mailing lists. My
Korean Air mileage, electric utility bill, bookstore and supermarket discounts
of the day. More importantly, planned outage warnings from the data centre and
connectivity providers here, just to name a few.

Those you ordinarily do NOT want to block or divert. 'Real' spam should be (will
be?) caught by something other than a mere 'noreply@' in a header.

> Also, rewriting the inbound mail is impossible as I
> don't know the proper destination when it is missing.
>


Not 'impossible'. Just labour-intensive. It can be channeled to a Mailadmin's
IMAP folder for analysis and manual onpassing. Or not.

Think paper-mail postal service and their 'dead letter' office. Usually they
manage to deliver even if all they have is a partial address. Or just a first
name... Mark One human wetware is good at fuzzy logic.

And .. I did say 'labour intensive'.

>


One - or both - of us is confused..

AFAICS, it isn't the *inbound* with a 'noreply@' that is your problem.... Not
yet, anyway...

(you have said) that it is *inadvertently replying to* an already-received
message from 'noreply@' and being left with no indication as to what transpired
thereafter.

Having your MUA redirect those replies - or throw a flag and refuse to use such
an address - at the time you compose and send the attempted reply (so you can do
something else before the fact..) seems to be the brain-crutch you need if
actually looking at a header is overly onerous.

'nuf said...

Bill