Fw: Yahoo Mailing List Snafu ...

[David Woodhouse]

On Thu, 2014-04-17 at 20:46 +0100, Jonathan H wrote:
> I'm totally lost; I appear to be missing the rest of the thread.
> 
> Is it related to this? http://www.virusbtn.com/blog/2014/04_15.xml

Basically, Yahoo! have just broken their own email setup for mailing
lists. They no longer accept messages with 'From: xxxx at yahoo.com' coming
from elsewhere. Like mailing list servers. Which is how fairly much
*all* mailing lists behave, when a Yahoo subscriber sends mail to the
list

> Now, this list is setup in a quite (ahem) "unique" way; I wonder if
> that might be triggering spam filters?

No, this list is perfectly normal. Especially with regard to the 'From'
header.

> For example, every single one of the other roughly 25 mailing lists
> has headers in the form of:
> 
> from:a at b.com
> reply-to: list at somelists.org
> to: list at somelists.org

See? The 'From:' header there was also the original sender of the
message, right? And would also be broken by Yahoo's recent brain damage.

> but this list has:
> 
> from: David Woodhouse <xxxx at infradead.org>
> to: Chris J Brady <xxxx at yahoo.com>
> cc: get_iplayer <get_iplayer at lists.infradead.org>

The To: and Cc: are entirely interchangeable; that's purely cosmetic.
You can send To the list or Cc the list as you see fit, and it really
doesn't make any difference.

> (As anyone who's ever replied, you'll know it plays havoc and requires
> a fair amount of farting around with
> I've not idea why it's like this, but David's list, David's rules I suppose.)

Why on earth would you have to do anything other than just hit 'reply to
all'?

I think you're confused and think that it's acceptable to reply *only*
to the list, and rudely strip other participants from Cc. I recommend
reading http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html to correct that
misconception. (Redux: Either choice inconveniences some people but
replying only to the list is *more* of a problem and could cut people
out of the discussion entirely, so don't do that. Keeping people in Cc
when they don't need it is a trivial cosmetic inconvenience for them at
worst.)

But that's orthogonal to the Yahoo brokenness.

> In what way is Yahoo in particular "broken" in this case, though? As
> far as I can see, they are simply enforcing something which is 10
> years overdue and much needed - ie: no sender spoofing and a valid,
> signed, authenticated email.

What you describe is not "email". That isn't how email works.

The list sends messages with a reverse-path of
get_iplayer-owner at lists.infradead.org, which is not spoofed. The From:
header is also correct according to the standards since it identifies
the *author* of the email. Yahoo is, as I said, simply broken.

Like other list managers who don't care about pandering to stupidity,
I'll probably just put a filter on so that the lists automatically
reject messages from yahoo.com addresses. Here's a nickel, kid. Get a
proper email account.

-- 
dwmw2

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