Re: qconfirm-inject/qconfirm-notice

On Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 05:20:42PM -0500, Chris Johnson wrote:
> I've been playing with the new version of qconfirm. I used
> qconfirm-conf -i to set up the qconfirm-inject/qconfirm-notice stuff,
> and I've configure mutt to send mail using qconfirm-inject.
Ok.

> I sent mail to a couple of addresses that I know to be qconfirm
> protected, and, as I had a vague idea should happen, the confirmation
> process was handled automatically, and a "confirmation accepted"
> message was eventually delivered to me. But with one particular

Yes, that's how it works currently.

> qconfirm protected address, the "please confirm your message" message
> is delivered to my mailbox, instead of being handled automatically by
> qconfirm-notice. Does anyone know what would cause qconfirm-notice not
> to recognize a confirmation request?

qconfirm-notice looks at the Message-ID of the confirmation request, and
since version 0.12.0 qconfirm-check creates a special Message-ID for
confirmation requests.  Most probably this particular address runs a
previous version of qconfirm.

See http://smarden.org/qconfirm/technical.html#request for details.

> Is this the sole purpose of qconfirm-inject/qconfirm-notice, i.e the
> automatic return of confirmation requests? Is there something else it
> does?

There's more.  Distinguishing between (not public) envelope sender and
public mail address let's you easily sort out delivery notifications
from other mail.  I personally have them delivered into a separate
maildir.

qconfirm-notice can validate delivery notifications (to some extent),
and refuses to accept notifications about delivery to addresses
qconfirm-inject never has sent mail to.  In future, it may pre-process
normal delivery notifications and present them to the user in a
consistent format.

When using qconfirm-inject for all your mails, you could reject or drop
mails with an empty envelope sender sent to your public mail address, as
they only can be bounces from really broken MTAs.  I'm already doing
this since some time for my main mail address.  This protects you
against a flood of bounces if a spammer decides to use your public mail
address as envelope sender of mass-mail, and against spam with an empty
envelope sender.

> Will it confirm qsecretary messages?

No, qsecretary would have to create the special Message-ID for the
confirmation requests it sends, then it works automatically.

> I've read the documentation eleventy zillion times, but it's all still
> a bit hazy to me.

I had my problems finding a good way to document the new things.
Corrections, improvements are appreciated.

Regards, Gerrit.