Re: Auto-reply not being sent in some cases

On 24/07/12 20:18, Professional Software Engineering wrote:

At 08:31 2012-07-24, Michael Bluejay wrote:

I'm trying to send an autoreply to senders
who leave the Subject: field of their message blank, telling them that
my server rejects messages with blank subjects (because in my
experience, such no-subject messages are either spam or not worth
reading).

Pardon my bluntness, but in doing this, YOU are a BIG part of the
problem. If you expect it is spam, chances are, you're "reflecting" a
spam event on the victim of forgery - someone whose email address was
plastered onto the spam, but who in no way is responsible for the
message you're bouncing. If it isn't a legit sender address, you're
just sending your message into the ether (and generating a bounce,
which is at least directed to another address of yours for the
purpose). The few people who get a legit message from you about the
lack of a subject, well, they're not the spammers, so basically you're
harassing them for being clods - but being a bigger clod in doing so.

Honestly, I fail to see an upside here.

Sean, You wrote the right things regarding spam but I have never seen
spam message

with blank subject, just the opposite. The blank subject messages
that I get arrive from

friends or colleague with simple well known address when they want to
send instantly a not

formal message. So, replay to this address does not make problem.

One more thing the you right, sending again the original body is bad
idea. I agree with your

arguments and technical notes.

But, the blank subject makes a mess in the inbox threads, so, I do
replay and ask for subject

from the sender.

## The spaces include TAB

:0
* ^Subject:(N/A|FWd?|REp?|(\])|(\[)|[: ])*$

{

RP=`formail -rtx To:`

:0 bfw

|awk '{next};END{print "Please send me reasonable Subject"}'

:0 hfw

|formail -I"From: [email protected] " -I"Content-Transfer-Encoding:"
-I"To: $RP"

:0 c

! $RP

:0

junk

}

--udi

<... technical notes ...>

I'd start the list with "replying to spam". Rethink your
strategy here - it's one thing to have a front-end on a list processor
that rejects messages from _known_subscribers_ which don't meet posting
requirements, but replying to all inbound mail because it lacks a
subject will not end well.

---

Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

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Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies. I'll get my copy from the
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