Google Gmail mailing list bounces

Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

A PSA (Public Service Annoucement) for help-gnu-emacs.

We have had several subscribers ask about a recent problem with
Google's Gmail rejecting the mailing list.  Indeed about 30 Gmail
subscribers were bounced off the mailing list due to Google rejecting
mail from help-gnu-emacs.  Other addresses were okay.

This happens every so often.  Google will decide that mail from a
mailing list is spam and reject all messages at SMTP mail transfer
time.  Mailman receives those bounces and counts them up for each
recipient, not knowing anything about Google but only about bounces
per recipient.  If the bounces for a recipient exceeds the Mailman
bounce threshold then Mailman turns off delivery for that recipient.
Then later Mailman will send a notice to the recipient that mail
delivery has been turned off and that they can turn it on again if
they still want it.

Why does Google do this?  I don't know.  Google is a faceless
organization and they ignore complaints.  I have never been able to
get a response from them.  Fortunately Google seems to rate limit and
expire rather than block forever.  So waiting long enough seems to
reset the problem.

But in the specific case of mail from a mailing list there is a lot of
things that look like spam but are emacs lisp code sections and
config.log files and other output that may have similar characterists
to spam but are perfectly valid email messages on technical lists.
And then if users click "Junk" instead of unsubscribing that adds
positive feedback and tips things over the edge.

Also I think Gmail users in general are a big part of the problem.
Users subscribe to a mailing list and then later decide they do not
want to be subscribed and instead of unsubscribing start to report
mailing list mail as spam.  The automated machinery at Gmail then
learns the messages from the mailing list as spam and then starts to
reject messages from the mailing list as spam.  Users I have talked to
personally just can't be bothered to unsubscribe when the "Junk"
action is so handy and do not believe they are hurting anyone else
just by clicking a box on a web page.  They are astounded when I try
to convince them otherwise.

Also the entire gnu.org subnet moved from one ISP to another ISP a
month ago.  This means that any whitelists that were in place for the
previous subnet are no longer present for the new subnet.  This
reputation service problem was a worried-about problem for the move.
No one wanted to move.  But bandwidth is donated and there was no
option but to leave one donor and move to the new donor.

Because there were a number of reports from people I thought I would
make an announcement here about it and communicate what was happening.
If someone at Gmail has been bounced off the only thing that can be
done at the moment is to wait a bit and then follow the Mailman
instructions mailed to turn mailing list delivery back on again.

I don't know what we can do about it.  But regardless I always welcome
communication from mailing list users about problems.  If nothing else
we can all sympathize together. :-}

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Skip Montanaro]

> Also I think Gmail users in general are a big part of the problem.
> Users subscribe to a mailing list and then later decide they do not
> want to be subscribed and instead of unsubscribing start to report
> mailing list mail as spam.

A couple things here. I help manage mail.python.org. We do (or at
least used to) see lots of messages which look like what you describe,
but coming from abuse@yahoo.com. I don't think laziness stops at the
gmail.com boundary. ;-)

Of perhaps more interest, when I report spam mail sent to a mailing
list to which I subscribe, Gmail will generally ask if I want to
unsubscribe to the list as well, or just report the message as spam.
If that's a general feature of how Gmail works and not just
this-feature-is-special-for-Skip, the laziness of the subscriber
wielding the mouse would be pretty astounding.

Skip Montanaro

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> A couple things here. I help manage mail.python.org. We do (or at
> least used to) see lots of messages which look like what you describe,
> but coming from abuse@yahoo.com.

Recently Yahoo started enforcing DKIM in a restrictive way that blocks
mailing list traffic to Yahoo subscribers.  I am away from my notes at
the moment so won't try to describe the details further now.  But a
lot of people with Yahoo addresses have been suffering due to their
recent DKIM policy.

> I don't think laziness stops at the gmail.com boundary. ;-)

Agreed!  It was Gmail just recently but people are people everywhere!

> Of perhaps more interest, when I report spam mail sent to a mailing
> list to which I subscribe, Gmail will generally ask if I want to
> unsubscribe to the list as well, or just report the message as spam.

That would be nice if that is how it works.  I know it didn't at one
time but time passes and features are added and that would be a nice
way to do things now.  Hopefully they do.

> If that's a general feature of how Gmail works and not just
> this-feature-is-special-for-Skip, the laziness of the subscriber
> wielding the mouse would be pretty astounding.

Has anyone @gmail.com used that feature recently and are able to
comment if that is how it is done now?  It would be interesting to
know.  Please do not try it with help-gnu-emacs as a test or we will
be in trouble all over again!  But someone who has happened upon the
task naturally with a real spam message from a mailing list would be
the best case for information.

However I think it does not make sense to report spam that came
through a mailing list as spam to the email service provider used to
*read* the mail.  Since that will only block the entire mailing list,
or not.  And one being subscribed to the mailing list is expected to
get mail from it.  The place to report spam on a mailing list is to
the mailing list administrators so that the anti-spam can be improved
there.

I say improved not solved.  Unfortunately there is no complete
solution to spam because it is a people problem, spammers are people,
and being people are very clever.  People will always think of
something new.

But we can hopefully keep spam down to the level where it is not a
serious problem.  For example the gnu.org lists I think have quite a
good level of anti-spam.  Therefore I simply file mail from mailing
lists into my mailbox and don't use any anti-spam on the receving end
of my mailbox for them.  If you do find a spam problem on a gnu.org
list please do make a report of it to mailman AT gnu.org where we can
know about it and look into it.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Nate Bass]

> Has anyone @gmail.com used that feature recently and are able to
> comment if that is how it is done now?  It would be interesting to
> know.
>

I observed 3 different behaviors when reporting spam in Gmail. Don't
worry, I did not report any GNU mailing lists :)

When reporting this current message (help-gnu-emacs) as spam Gmail
will prompt first whether you want to "Unsubscribe and report spam" or
"Report spam". Again, I did not click anything on this dialog so
help-gnu-emacs will be unaffected. Unsubscribing redirects you to
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/options/help-gnu-emacs. There is also a link
to "learn more" at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858?hl=en

When reporting other lists (for example bug-make) it prompts the same
dialog except it will not give a link to unsubscribe. Instead, it will send
a
message to bug-make-request with a subject of "unsubscribe" and a body
of "This message was automatically generated by Gmail."

Oddly, when I reported w3c-announce@w3.org it did not prompt anything
and went directly to spam.

On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 12:57 PM Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:

> Skip Montanaro wrote:
> > A couple things here. I help manage mail.python.org. We do (or at
> > least used to) see lots of messages which look like what you describe,
> > but coming from abuse@yahoo.com.
>
> Recently Yahoo started enforcing DKIM in a restrictive way that blocks
> mailing list traffic to Yahoo subscribers.  I am away from my notes at
> the moment so won't try to describe the details further now.  But a
> lot of people with Yahoo addresses have been suffering due to their
> recent DKIM policy.
>
> > I don't think laziness stops at the gmail.com boundary. ;-)
>
> Agreed!  It was Gmail just recently but people are people everywhere!
>
> > Of perhaps more interest, when I report spam mail sent to a mailing
> > list to which I subscribe, Gmail will generally ask if I want to
> > unsubscribe to the list as well, or just report the message as spam.
>
> That would be nice if that is how it works.  I know it didn't at one
> time but time passes and features are added and that would be a nice
> way to do things now.  Hopefully they do.
>
> > If that's a general feature of how Gmail works and not just
> > this-feature-is-special-for-Skip, the laziness of the subscriber
> > wielding the mouse would be pretty astounding.
>
> Has anyone @gmail.com used that feature recently and are able to
> comment if that is how it is done now?  It would be interesting to
> know.  Please do not try it with help-gnu-emacs as a test or we will
> be in trouble all over again!  But someone who has happened upon the
> task naturally with a real spam message from a mailing list would be
> the best case for information.
>
> However I think it does not make sense to report spam that came
> through a mailing list as spam to the email service provider used to
> *read* the mail.  Since that will only block the entire mailing list,
> or not.  And one being subscribed to the mailing list is expected to
> get mail from it.  The place to report spam on a mailing list is to
> the mailing list administrators so that the anti-spam can be improved
> there.
>
> I say improved not solved.  Unfortunately there is no complete
> solution to spam because it is a people problem, spammers are people,
> and being people are very clever.  People will always think of
> something new.
>
> But we can hopefully keep spam down to the level where it is not a
> serious problem.  For example the gnu.org lists I think have quite a
> good level of anti-spam.  Therefore I simply file mail from mailing
> lists into my mailbox and don't use any anti-spam on the receving end
> of my mailbox for them.  If you do find a spam problem on a gnu.org
> list please do make a report of it to mailman AT gnu.org where we can
> know about it and look into it.
>
> Bob
>
>

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Nate Bass wrote:
> I observed 3 different behaviors when reporting spam in Gmail. Don't
> worry, I did not report any GNU mailing lists :)

Awesome! :-)

> When reporting this current message (help-gnu-emacs) as spam Gmail
> will prompt first whether you want to "Unsubscribe and report spam" or
> "Report spam". Again, I did not click anything on this dialog so
> help-gnu-emacs will be unaffected. Unsubscribing redirects you to
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/options/help-gnu-emacs. There is also a link

That is the List-Unsubscribe header specified URL.  Good.

> to "learn more" at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858?hl=en

Also reasonable but that documentation answer looked old and stale as
it did not mention the new behavior of unsubscribing.  Guessing that
the behavior was updated to unsubscribe but all of the nooks and
crannies where documentation such as the above was stuff has not been
updated.

> When reporting other lists (for example bug-make) it prompts the
> same dialog except it will not give a link to unsubscribe. Instead,
> it will send a message to bug-make-request with a subject of
> "unsubscribe" and a body of "This message was automatically
> generated by Gmail."

There is no difference between bug-make and help-gnu-emacs as both are
on the same server running the same software.  The only difference I
can think of here is if you were subscribed using different addresses
for one than the other causing Gmail to think you were subscribed for
one but not for the other.  Or something like that.  Because they are
otherwise identically run.

Please look at the message headers and see if they are different
coming to you.  I think the Gmail interface is the more actions or
something where it says "show original message" or something similarly
worded.

> Oddly, when I reported w3c-announce@w3.org it did not prompt anything
> and went directly to spam.

Please check the headers of that message too.  Perhaps that one did
not have the standard List-* headers and did not have a
List-Unsubscribe header?  If not then there would have been no way for
automated machinery to know.  But on the other hand if those do exist
for that message than that is strange that it would be different.

Thanks for the report!  Good stuff.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Feb 19, 2019, at 5:56, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
> 
>> I don't think laziness stops at the gmail.com <http://gmail.com/> boundary. ;-)
> 
> Agreed!  It was Gmail just recently but people are people everywhere!

There may be laziness, but also a lot of discoverability and basic knowledge issues. I don't think most modern mail users know that unsubscribe information is given in the list mail header. Also, in "modern" mail clients there is no practical way to see that information (why would people want to check the source of a message ?)

But I do understand this comment is slightly besides the point. :)

Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
> There may be laziness, but also a lot of discoverability and basic
> knowledge issues. I don't think most modern mail users know that
> unsubscribe information is given in the list mail header.

Not having grown up with it people now arriving on the scene and using
it are using the mailers that have been marketed to them.  They now
have no idea how mail works.  It all might as well be magic to them.
If it truly were magic there would be no difference to them.

> Also, in "modern" mail clients there is no practical way to see that
> information (why would people want to check the source of a message?)
> 
> But I do understand this comment is slightly besides the point. :)

I keep thinking that people will see how bad the Gmail/Outlook
interface to mail is and will leave them to use better ones.  IIRC
they don't even show you the email address of the user!  Insanity!  I
would never tolerate that in a mail client.  And as you can see I
haven't ever because I am not using them.  But I know that a *LOT* of
people use them but I am astounded that they do.  There truly is no
hope for the human race. :-(

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Feb 19, 2019, at 14:23, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:
> 
> Not having grown up with it people now arriving on the scene and using
> it are using the mailers that have been marketed to them.  They now
> have no idea how mail works.  It all might as well be magic to them.
> If it truly were magic there would be no difference to them.

I started mailing in 95 from a private ISP and it was not obvious then either :)
A lot of people literally *grow up* with modern interfaces now, so it's a loosing battle.

> I keep thinking that people will see how bad the Gmail/Outlook
> interface to mail is and will leave them to use better ones.

Even offline clients GUI does not give easy access to that information. For ex, when I display "All headers" in my client (Apple's Mail.app) I only get a greyed out list of seemingly meaningless strings.

I'd love to have a client that displays "List-Unsubscribe: ⁨<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/options/help-gnu-emacs>⁩" as an actual *link* to the ressource. Silly question: do such clients exist ? :)


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Stephen Berman]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 14:36:52 +0900 Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd love to have a client that displays "List-Unsubscribe:
> ⁨<https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/options/help-gnu-emacs>⁩" as an actual *link* to
> the ressource. Silly question: do such clients exist ? :)

Gnus shows such links in the headers if they are available, when you
type `t' (gnus-summary-toggle-header) on the article in the *Summary*
buffer.  For example, for your post, before toggling with `t' I see
this:

From: Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces
Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help
To: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>, help-gnu-emacs <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 14:36:52 +0900

After typing `t' I see this:

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Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help
Subject: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces
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In the line starting "List-Unsubscribe" the links are even clickable
(likewise with the links in the other lines).

Steve Berman

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eric S Fraga]

On Monday, 18 Feb 2019 at 22:23, Bob Proulx wrote:
> IIRC they don't even show you the email address of the user!
> Insanity!  I would never tolerate that in a mail client.  

This almost caught me out the other day (somebody tried to scam
me).  This was on a phone using k9-mail.  For this (and other reasons),
I try to only use gnus to read my emails, regardless of the mail server.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.2.1 on Debian buster/sid

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Xavier Maillard]

> From: Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>
> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 17:15:03 +0000
> Content-Type: text/plain
> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux)
> 
> On Monday, 18 Feb 2019 at 22:23, Bob Proulx wrote:
> > IIRC they don't even show you the email address of the user!
> > Insanity!  I would never tolerate that in a mail client.  
> 
> This almost caught me out the other day (somebody tried to scam
> me).  This was on a phone using k9-mail.  For this (and other reasons),
> I try to only use gnus to read my emails, regardless of the mail server.

Ditto, only using Rmail here for that. At worst, reading quickly
through the summary buffer of my smartphone mailclient. I never open
or answer any message in my phone.



-- 
Xavier Maillard                      
e/j:xavier@maillard.im                w:www.maillard.im
m: 06 52 18 63 43 (old)
m: 06 49 60 48 56 (NEW)

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <brandelune@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 11:29:40 +0900
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> There may be laziness, but also a lot of discoverability and basic knowledge issues. I don't think most modern mail users know that unsubscribe information is given in the list mail header.

They get a reminder once a month, so they just need to pay attention
(or even archive one such reminder for each list, to have it available
when needed).

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Scott Randby]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I've been removed from this list twice in the last week, but I haven't been removed from either Emacs-Devel or Emacs-Orgmode since I started subscribing to those lists years ago. Maybe I will never know why.

Scott Randby

On 2/18/19 2:40 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> A PSA (Public Service Annoucement) for help-gnu-emacs.
> 
> We have had several subscribers ask about a recent problem with
> Google's Gmail rejecting the mailing list.  Indeed about 30 Gmail
> subscribers were bounced off the mailing list due to Google rejecting
> mail from help-gnu-emacs.  Other addresses were okay.
> 
> This happens every so often.  Google will decide that mail from a
> mailing list is spam and reject all messages at SMTP mail transfer
> time.  Mailman receives those bounces and counts them up for each
> recipient, not knowing anything about Google but only about bounces
> per recipient.  If the bounces for a recipient exceeds the Mailman
> bounce threshold then Mailman turns off delivery for that recipient.
> Then later Mailman will send a notice to the recipient that mail
> delivery has been turned off and that they can turn it on again if
> they still want it.
> 
> Why does Google do this?  I don't know.  Google is a faceless
> organization and they ignore complaints.  I have never been able to
> get a response from them.  Fortunately Google seems to rate limit and
> expire rather than block forever.  So waiting long enough seems to
> reset the problem.
> 
> But in the specific case of mail from a mailing list there is a lot of
> things that look like spam but are emacs lisp code sections and
> config.log files and other output that may have similar characterists
> to spam but are perfectly valid email messages on technical lists.
> And then if users click "Junk" instead of unsubscribing that adds
> positive feedback and tips things over the edge.
> 
> Also I think Gmail users in general are a big part of the problem.
> Users subscribe to a mailing list and then later decide they do not
> want to be subscribed and instead of unsubscribing start to report
> mailing list mail as spam.  The automated machinery at Gmail then
> learns the messages from the mailing list as spam and then starts to
> reject messages from the mailing list as spam.  Users I have talked to
> personally just can't be bothered to unsubscribe when the "Junk"
> action is so handy and do not believe they are hurting anyone else
> just by clicking a box on a web page.  They are astounded when I try
> to convince them otherwise.
> 
> Also the entire gnu.org subnet moved from one ISP to another ISP a
> month ago.  This means that any whitelists that were in place for the
> previous subnet are no longer present for the new subnet.  This
> reputation service problem was a worried-about problem for the move.
> No one wanted to move.  But bandwidth is donated and there was no
> option but to leave one donor and move to the new donor.
> 
> Because there were a number of reports from people I thought I would
> make an announcement here about it and communicate what was happening.
> If someone at Gmail has been bounced off the only thing that can be
> done at the moment is to wait a bit and then follow the Mailman
> instructions mailed to turn mailing list delivery back on again.
> 
> I don't know what we can do about it.  But regardless I always welcome
> communication from mailing list users about problems.  If nothing else
> we can all sympathize together. :-}
> 
> Bob
> 
> 

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 17:01:07 -0500
> 
> Thank you for the detailed explanation. I've been removed from this list twice in the last week, but I haven't been removed from either Emacs-Devel or Emacs-Orgmode since I started subscribing to those lists years ago. Maybe I will never know why.

Because each time mailman blocks you in emacs-devel, I manually
unblock you.  This happens once every few weeks, very annoying.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Kaushal Modi]

On Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 10:35 PM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

>
> Because each time mailman blocks you in emacs-devel, I manually
> unblock you.  This happens once every few weeks, very annoying.
>

Thank you!

I also recently was asked to reconfirm my Gmail email on help-gnu-emacs ..
thanks for making my emacs-devel experience seamless too.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Scott Randby]

On 2/18/19 10:35 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> From: Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com>
>> Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 17:01:07 -0500
>>
>> Thank you for the detailed explanation. I've been removed from this list twice in the last week, but I haven't been removed from either Emacs-Devel or Emacs-Orgmode since I started subscribing to those lists years ago. Maybe I will never know why.
> 
> Because each time mailman blocks you in emacs-devel, I manually
> unblock you.  This happens once every few weeks, very annoying.

Well, you have my thanks and gratitude. I think I will set up an email account just for mailing lists using a different service, subscribe to lists using that account, and unsubscribe my gmail address.

Scott

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 10:07:45 -0500
> 
> > Because each time mailman blocks you in emacs-devel, I manually
> > unblock you.  This happens once every few weeks, very annoying.
> 
> Well, you have my thanks and gratitude. I think I will set up an email account just for mailing lists using a different service, subscribe to lists using that account, and unsubscribe my gmail address.

It's not your fault.  Which is why I do it every time I see a
"blocked" message, which mailman sends to me as the list admin.  It is
also not limited to gmail, AFAIR.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> It's not your fault.  Which is why I do it every time I see a
> "blocked" message, which mailman sends to me as the list admin.

I haven't been so kind and generous.  There are so many mailing lists
that I filter out all of the mailman administrivia messages.  Eli has
gone above and beyond to take care of emacs-devel and others he is
maintaining.

> It is also not limited to gmail, AFAIR.

Agreed.  It will be caused by any of the email service providers that
decide to reject email for a while.  Recently Yahoo has also been a
problem too.  It's mostly a recency and scale of the problem thing.
Gmail has become the 800lb gorilla.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 10:01:49 -0700
> From: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > It's not your fault.  Which is why I do it every time I see a
> > "blocked" message, which mailman sends to me as the list admin.
> 
> I haven't been so kind and generous.  There are so many mailing lists
> that I filter out all of the mailman administrivia messages.  Eli has
> gone above and beyond to take care of emacs-devel and others he is
> maintaining.

I really don't see how we can leave this to the subscribers
themselves: they just silently stop getting any messages from the
list, and it's anybody's guess when will they notice.  IMO, it would
be prudent if people who oversee GNU lists and configure mailman could
do something to prevent this automatic blocking, because it makes no
sense to me: why do we care so much about a bounced message?  But if
this wouldn't happen, I can't see how could I NOT unblock subscribers
who fell victim to this atrocity.  It sounds the same part of my
duties as reviewing messages held for moderation.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > I haven't been so kind and generous.  There are so many mailing lists
> > that I filter out all of the mailman administrivia messages.  Eli has
> > gone above and beyond to take care of emacs-devel and others he is
> > maintaining.
> 
> I really don't see how we can leave this to the subscribers
> themselves: they just silently stop getting any messages from the
> list, and it's anybody's guess when will they notice.

If Mailman disables a subscriber due to bounces then later (due to a
nightly cron?) Mailman sends a notice to the recipient that their
subscription has been suspended saying it is due to excessive bounces
and includes instructions on enabling delivery again.  Therefore the
user should notice if they are reading the email.

Of course I know that I cycle in and out of reading email myself
because of other time commitments that take me away from the email.
So I might not notice for a while and then come back and find I had
been suspended for some time.  But for gnu.org lists at least there
are archives available to backfill missing messages if desired.

> IMO, it would be prudent if people who oversee GNU lists and
> configure mailman could do something to prevent this automatic
> blocking, because it makes no sense to me: why do we care so much
> about a bounced message?

Bounce messages are the only way to detect that subscribers fall off
the planetary network.  Because people move providers to abandon their
old address trying to escape spam.  Because people die.  Because
addresses as a natural course of order become undeliverable.  Forever.
If they were not removed from the list then the servers would become
clogged up trying to deliver dead letters forever.  Bounce handling is
the only way to clean up.

Sure some addresses are only temporarily undeliverable.  That's why
Mailman uses rate limits.  Normally if there is a bounce or two it
doesn't do anything other than bounce those individual messages.  It
is only when there are many that something must be wrong and delivery
is suspended.

And I don't have data to back this up but I think since Google is
looking at how recent it has rejected incoming messages too that if
delivery did not suspend that Google would not be given time to reset
either.  Therefore I think that Mailman's delivery suspension is
needed to back off to give Google time to not reject any more messages
and therefore reset its timers.

Unblocking manually by natural course happens after a delay.  We have
to sleep sometime.  Therefore doesn't fall into problems.  Or if it
does it just extends the cycle a cycle and then the natural delay
before unblocking is enough on the next round.  So all good.

> But if this wouldn't happen, I can't see how could I NOT unblock
> subscribers who fell victim to this atrocity.  It sounds the same
> part of my duties as reviewing messages held for moderation.

Well...  If Google were more responsive then I would be more
sympathetic.  But if they can ignore the problem then surely I can do
exactly the same thing on the problem they created.  I am sympathetic
to users caught in the trap.  I will try to help them.  If by nothing
more than communicating what I know about what is happening.  But
there is only so much time in the day.  And users are notified by
Mailman that delivery has been blocked and with instructions on
unblocking them.  They can self-service fix their own delivery
unblocking.  This spreads the work of the problem out among everyone.
Certainly not the best solution I agree.  But Google is making money
from selling users while the rest of us are volunteering time and
resources.  So it is not a level playing field.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 12:18:21 -0700
> From: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>
> 
> If Mailman disables a subscriber due to bounces then later (due to a
> nightly cron?) Mailman sends a notice to the recipient that their
> subscription has been suspended

First, until that cron job runs, the victim could miss quite a lot of
messages.  And second, I wouldn't be surprised if that notification
went straight to the spam folder, the way it's formatted.

> > IMO, it would be prudent if people who oversee GNU lists and
> > configure mailman could do something to prevent this automatic
> > blocking, because it makes no sense to me: why do we care so much
> > about a bounced message?
> 
> Bounce messages are the only way to detect that subscribers fall off
> the planetary network.

That's true, but why disable their delivery on the first such message?
Why not wait until there are, say, a dozen of them?  A small number of
bounced messages means a temporary problem, which doesn't justify such
drastic measures, IMO.

> Sure some addresses are only temporarily undeliverable.  That's why
> Mailman uses rate limits.  Normally if there is a bounce or two it
> doesn't do anything other than bounce those individual messages.  It
> is only when there are many that something must be wrong and delivery
> is suspended.

It does?  I certainly don't see that.  IME, a single bounced message
causes a user's mail delivery to be disabled.  What did I miss?

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > If Mailman disables a subscriber due to bounces then later (due to a
> > nightly cron?) Mailman sends a notice to the recipient that their
> > subscription has been suspended
> 
> First, until that cron job runs, the victim could miss quite a lot of
> messages.

True.  Fortunately there is the archive to fall back upon if there is
a desire to look at the missed messages.

  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/

> And second, I wouldn't be surprised if that notification
> went straight to the spam folder, the way it's formatted.

The messages that were forwarded to me looked okay to me.  Good even!
What specifically about them makes them look like spam?  What would
you do differently?

The content is short enough.  Here is what it looks like:

  Your membership in the mailing list help-gnu-emacs has been disabled
  due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was dated
  15-Feb-2019.  You will not get any more messages from this list until
  you re-enable your membership.  You will receive 3 more reminders like
  this before your membership in the list is deleted.

  To re-enable your membership, you can simply respond to this message
  (leaving the Subject: line intact), or visit the confirmation page at

      https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/confirm/help-gnu-emacs/f1d2d2f924e986ac86fdf7b36c94bcdf32beec15

  You can also visit your membership page at

      https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/options/help-gnu-emacs/[[redacted-address]]

  On your membership page, you can change various delivery options such
  as your email address and whether you get digests or not.  As a
  reminder, your membership password is [[redacted]]

  If you have any questions or problems, you can contact the list owner at

      help-gnu-emacs-owner@gnu.org

Seems reasonable and clear enough.

Note that I have NO ability to affect either Mailman or the
installation of it on lists.gnu.org.  I am just over on the side
talking about it with the rest of the chickens.  I can't affect any
changes to the mailed message content or format.

> > Bounce messages are the only way to detect that subscribers fall off
> > the planetary network.
> 
> That's true, but why disable their delivery on the first such message?

It never happens on the first message.

I only know what the Mailman documentation says online.  It is short
enough.  Here is what it says:

  https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/admin/help-gnu-emacs/bounce (login required)

  These policies control the automatic bounce processing system in
  Mailman.  Here's an overview of how it works.

  When a bounce is received, Mailman tries to extract two pieces of
  information from the message: the address of the member the message
  was intended for, and the severity of the problem causing the
  bounce.  The severity can be either hard or soft meaning either a
  fatal error occurred, or a transient error occurred.  When in doubt,
  a hard severity is used.

  If no member address can be extracted from the bounce, then the bounce
  is usually discarded.  Otherwise, each member is assigned a bounce
  score and every time we encounter a bounce from this member we
  increment the score.  Hard bounces increment by 1 while soft bounces
  increment by 0.5.  We only increment the bounce score once per day, so
  even if we receive ten hard bounces from a member per day, their score
  will increase by only 1 for that day.

  When a member's bounce score is greater than the bounce score
  threshold, the subscription is disabled.  Once disabled, the member
  will not receive any postings from the list until their membership is
  explicitly re-enabled (either by the list administrator or the
  user).  However, they will receive occasional reminders that their
  membership has been disabled, and these reminders will include
  information about how to re-enable their membership.

  You can control both the number of reminders the member will receive
  and the frequency with which these reminders are sent.

  There is one other important configuration variable; after a certain
  period of time -- during which no bounces from the member are received
  -- the bounce information is considered stale and discarded.  Thus by
  adjusting this value, and the score threshold, you can control how
  quickly bouncing members are disabled. You should tune both of these
  to the frequency and traffic volume of your list.

  Should Mailman perform automatic bounce processing?
  (Details for bounce_processing) Yes

  The maximum member bounce score before the member's subscription is
  disabled. This value can be a floating point number.
  (Details for bounce_score_threshold) 5.0

  The number of days after which a member's bounce information is
  discarded, if no new bounces have been received in the interim. This
  value must be an integer.
  (Edit bounce_info_stale_after) 7

  How many Your Membership Is Disabled warnings a disabled member
  should get before their address is removed from the mailing list.
  Set to 0 to immediately remove an address from the list once their
  bounce score exceeds the threshold. This value must be an integer.
  (Edit bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings) 3

  The number of days between sending the Your Membership Is Disabled warnings. This value must be an integer. 
  (Edit bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings_interval) 7

> Why not wait until there are, say, a dozen of them?  A small number of
> bounced messages means a temporary problem, which doesn't justify such
> drastic measures, IMO.

See the description for what Mailman is actually doing.  It says it
doesn't disable it on the first bounce.

> > Sure some addresses are only temporarily undeliverable.  That's why
> > Mailman uses rate limits.  Normally if there is a bounce or two it
> > doesn't do anything other than bounce those individual messages.  It
> > is only when there are many that something must be wrong and delivery
> > is suspended.
> 
> It does?  I certainly don't see that.  IME, a single bounced message
> causes a user's mail delivery to be disabled.  What did I miss?

I know my mail server has accidentally bounced all messages at times
and yet I was not bounced off the lists therefore it seems to be
operating as described.  It certainly did not bounce me off the lists
on the first bounce anyway.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:03:13 -0700
> From: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>
> 
>   The maximum member bounce score before the member's subscription is
>   disabled. This value can be a floating point number.
>   (Details for bounce_score_threshold) 5.0

5 bounced messages is waaaay too small, IMO.  I'm going to increase
the value in for the lists for which I'm responsible, thanks for
pointing this out.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Robert Pluim]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2019 16:03:13 -0700
>> From: Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>
>> 
>>   The maximum member bounce score before the member's subscription is
>>   disabled. This value can be a floating point number.
>>   (Details for bounce_score_threshold) 5.0
>
> 5 bounced messages is waaaay too small, IMO.  I'm going to increase
> the value in for the lists for which I'm responsible, thanks for
> pointing this out.

5 bounced messages at a rate of one per day, not 5 bounces total, no?

  increment by 0.5.  We only increment the bounce score once per day, so
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  even if we receive ten hard bounces from a member per day, their score
  will increase by only 1 for that day.

That might still be too low if someone is away from their setup for a
week or more.

Robert

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Yuri Khan]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 9:39 PM Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com> wrote:

> >>   The maximum member bounce score before the member's subscription is
> >>   disabled. This value can be a floating point number.
> >>   (Details for bounce_score_threshold) 5.0
>
> 5 bounced messages at a rate of one per day, not 5 bounces total, no?
>
>   increment by 0.5.  We only increment the bounce score once per day, so
>                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>   even if we receive ten hard bounces from a member per day, their score
>   will increase by only 1 for that day.

I am on Gmail and I have received a suspension notification today. I
can attest that I have *not* experienced a contiguous 5-day interval
without any new messages in help-gnu-emacs or emacs-devel.

This might mean *some* of the list messages bounce, and that is enough
to push my score over the threshold. Unfortunately I do not know how
to get details on which messages bounced and what the server said.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Robert Pluim]

Yuri Khan <yurivkhan@gmail.com> writes:

> On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 9:39 PM Robert Pluim <rpluim@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >>   The maximum member bounce score before the member's subscription is
>> >>   disabled. This value can be a floating point number.
>> >>   (Details for bounce_score_threshold) 5.0
>>
>> 5 bounced messages at a rate of one per day, not 5 bounces total, no?
>>
>>   increment by 0.5.  We only increment the bounce score once per day, so
>>                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>   even if we receive ten hard bounces from a member per day, their score
>>   will increase by only 1 for that day.
>
> I am on Gmail and I have received a suspension notification today. I
> can attest that I have *not* experienced a contiguous 5-day interval
> without any new messages in help-gnu-emacs or emacs-devel.

But there might have been a total of 5 bounces over a longer
period. If I read the manual correctly, the bounce score is reset only
after 7 days of no bounces, thereʼs no daily decrement.

> This might mean *some* of the list messages bounce, and that is enough
> to push my score over the threshold. Unfortunately I do not know how
> to get details on which messages bounced and what the server said.

Yes, that info is on the list admin side. So this is all conjecture.

Robert

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Robert Pluim wrote:
> Yuri Khan writes:
> > This might mean *some* of the list messages bounce, and that is enough
> > to push my score over the threshold. Unfortunately I do not know how
> > to get details on which messages bounced and what the server said.
> 
> Yes, that info is on the list admin side. So this is all conjecture.

And unfortunately Mailman doesn't provide a way to access those
bounces either.  I can't see.  I have no idea what has bounced.

There has been a few suggestions behind the scenes about how we might
be able to hack something in to be able to see some visibility into
what is getting bounced.  We will probably implement something in
order to have even an imperfect view of what is happening.  But up
until now and up until something is hacked in there isn't any
visbility in a stock Mailman installation.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Nate Bass]

I compared my Gmail to the archives and I found that I wasn't
receiving mail from one particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and I
think this caused me to bounce off the help-gnu-emacs mailing list.

I started to miss messages on February 6 at 8:51 PST, while receiving
all others on the mailing list. I missed at least one message each day
from this address (25 missed total) until February 10 at 12:35 PST
when I received a
message stating:
> Your membership in the mailing list help-gnu-emacs has been disabled
> due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was dated
> 10-Feb-2019.

I did receive messages (about 5 or 6) from moasenwood@zoho.eu
interspersed amongst
the missed messages. I checked the headers of the ones I received and
the ones I missed but I could not find any meaningful difference.

I compared my Gmail to the archives by diffing the mbox files
(https://superuser.com/a/990431/644460 if anyone wants to try) to be
sure that I wasn't missing messages from any other address. I even
checked Janurary and Feburary of emacs-devel and I could only find
missed messages from moasenwood@zoho.eu.

I can also confirm that, upon rejoining help-gnu-emacs on February 17,
I did not receive this message
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-02/msg00312.html
dated February 20. Maybe other users can check if they have this in
their inbox and report if you are using gmail or something else?

This issue raises two questions.
1) Why was I not receiving message from that address. Any thoughts
Emanuel? I did receive your original post "Gmane up again" and some
but not all of the following replies, if that helps.
2) Should the automatic bounce processing system be changed? I think
my experience confirms that help-gnu-emacs has a bounce score
threshold of 5.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Nate Bass wrote:
> I compared my Gmail to the archives and I found that I wasn't
> receiving mail from one particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and I
> think this caused me to bounce off the help-gnu-emacs mailing list.

That is quite interesting.  Mail from most members came through okay.
But mail from moasenwood@zoho.eu was frequently rejected by Gmail.  I
don't see anything unusual about that zoho.eu (no DKIM for example)
that would cause any difficulty.

> This issue raises two questions.
> 1) Why was I not receiving message from that address. Any thoughts
> Emanuel? I did receive your original post "Gmane up again" and some
> but not all of the following replies, if that helps.
> 2) Should the automatic bounce processing system be changed? I think
> my experience confirms that help-gnu-emacs has a bounce score
> threshold of 5.

Mailman has been a difficult program to improve.  The upstream has
forked Mailman 2 into a rewrite that is quite different Mailman 3.  No
one that I know has been running Mailman 3 yet.  So there is no
experience with it.  However being a complete rewrite from the ground
up I am confident predicting that it will have undesired behavior just
like Mailman 2 and what that will be can't be predicted until it is in
production service.  We will find out at that time.  Therefore Mailman
2 isn't getting design changes anymore.  Plus the instance on
lists.gnu.org only gets updates "infrequently".  That's probably the
best way to describe it.  It really depends upon who is employed as
the admins at the time and that changes from year to year.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Vasilii Kolobkov]

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> writes:

> Nate Bass wrote:
>> I compared my Gmail to the archives and I found that I wasn't
>> receiving mail from one particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and I
>> think this caused me to bounce off the help-gnu-emacs mailing list.
>
> That is quite interesting.  Mail from most members came through okay.
> But mail from moasenwood@zoho.eu was frequently rejected by Gmail.  I
> don't see anything unusual about that zoho.eu (no DKIM for example)
> that would cause any difficulty.

This might have to do with the way this company having their own ideas
of what constitutes legitimate mail. E.g. if the mta host doesn't have
good repuptation with them, regardless of whether you are following all
the good practices, you most likely will end up marked as spam.

I thought it does apply to the envelope sender though, but it might as
well be that they look into the original sender for ml correspondence.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> writes:

> Nate Bass wrote:
>> I compared my Gmail to the archives and I found that I wasn't
>> receiving mail from one particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and I
>> think this caused me to bounce off the help-gnu-emacs mailing list.
>
> That is quite interesting.  Mail from most members came through okay.
> But mail from moasenwood@zoho.eu was frequently rejected by Gmail.  I
> don't see anything unusual about that zoho.eu (no DKIM for example)
> that would cause any difficulty.
>
>> This issue raises two questions.
>> 1) Why was I not receiving message from that address. Any thoughts
>> Emanuel? I did receive your original post "Gmane up again" and some
>> but not all of the following replies, if that helps.
>> 2) Should the automatic bounce processing system be changed? I think
>> my experience confirms that help-gnu-emacs has a bounce score
>> threshold of 5.
>
> Mailman has been a difficult program to improve.  The upstream has
> forked Mailman 2 into a rewrite that is quite different Mailman 3.  No
> one that I know has been running Mailman 3 yet.  So there is no
> experience with it.  However being a complete rewrite from the ground
> up I am confident predicting that it will have undesired behavior just
> like Mailman 2 and what that will be can't be predicted until it is in
> production service.  We will find out at that time.  Therefore Mailman
> 2 isn't getting design changes anymore.  Plus the instance on
> lists.gnu.org only gets updates "infrequently".  That's probably the
> best way to describe it.  It really depends upon who is employed as
> the admins at the time and that changes from year to year.

I upgraded a (very small-scale) Mailman 2 installation to Mailman 3, and
regretted it. I think Mailman 3 will be fine when it's ready, but my
impression is that it's not ready. Specifically, while it seems like the
core of the system (actually sending messages) works fine, the web
interface -- and the interaction between core at the web interface -- is
not there. Just lots of odd errors and mismatches, and rough patches.

I didn't use it long enough to really know if core is stable, mind
you -- it's just that in the time before I gave up on it, I didn't see
any problems related to core.

Also, much as I love Python, I wish they'd written it in something else.
Django for the web interface makes sense, but for core, it seems like
anything compiled would have been better. It's a huge memory hog.

Wish I could like it more...
Eric

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Bob Proulx wrote:

> That is quite interesting. Mail from most
> members came through okay. But mail from
> moasenwood@zoho.eu was frequently rejected by
> Gmail. I don't see anything unusual about
> that zoho.eu (no DKIM for example) that would
> cause any difficulty.

DKIM = DomainKeys Identified Mail [1]

Alright, FTR there was no particular reason
whatsoever I choose the zoho service for mail.
I just wanted an e-mail which I could access
with the client of my liking, not thru
a web interface.

If zoho continues to be a bother to you, I can
absolutely get a new account somewhere else.
Just free of charge and no web interface, I'll
take it.

Obviously, that shouldn't stop anyone from
trying to figure out why and how this
happened...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ian Kelling]

Nate Bass <nw3455@gmail.com> writes:

> I compared my Gmail to the archives and I found that I wasn't
> receiving mail from one particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and I
> think this caused me to bounce off the help-gnu-emacs mailing list.
>
> I started to miss messages on February 6 at 8:51 PST, while receiving
> all others on the mailing list. I missed at least one message each day
> from this address (25 missed total) until February 10 at 12:35 PST
> when I received a
> message stating:
>> Your membership in the mailing list help-gnu-emacs has been disabled
>> due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was dated
>> 10-Feb-2019.
>
> I did receive messages (about 5 or 6) from moasenwood@zoho.eu
> interspersed amongst
> the missed messages. I checked the headers of the ones I received and
> the ones I missed but I could not find any meaningful difference.
>
> I compared my Gmail to the archives by diffing the mbox files
> (https://superuser.com/a/990431/644460 if anyone wants to try) to be
> sure that I wasn't missing messages from any other address. I even
> checked Janurary and Feburary of emacs-devel and I could only find
> missed messages from moasenwood@zoho.eu.
>
> I can also confirm that, upon rejoining help-gnu-emacs on February 17,
> I did not receive this message
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-02/msg00312.html
> dated February 20. Maybe other users can check if they have this in
> their inbox and report if you are using gmail or something else?
>
> This issue raises two questions.
> 1) Why was I not receiving message from that address. Any thoughts
> Emanuel? I did receive your original post "Gmane up again" and some
> but not all of the following replies, if that helps.
> 2) Should the automatic bounce processing system be changed? I think
> my experience confirms that help-gnu-emacs has a bounce score
> threshold of 5.

It looks like the dmarc issue I mentioned before. I'm working on fixing this.

$ host -t txt _dmarc.zoho.eu
_dmarc.zoho.eu descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0; rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu; ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"    

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Nate Bass wrote:

> I compared my Gmail to the archives and
> I found that I wasn't receiving mail from one
> particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and
> I think this caused me to bounce off the
> help-gnu-emacs mailing list.

Yes, that's me. Yeah, what can I say, I've
always been the odd man out! But no, I don't
know what's going on.

The history, if we stick to more recent events,
is like this.

First I finally understood the problem of
"breaking threads" when posting to the
newsgroup, gnu.emacs.help, which I had being
doing simply because it was faster than Gmane,
and I didn't understand the problem, despite
several people telling me about it. Yes, for
all my intelligence, I'm actually pretty slow
sometimes. Ehem...

So I thought, easy, I'll just go back to Gmane.
But then, the Gmane authorization was down, so
I couldn't get my new e-mail going. I then
registered for the mailing list, and thought
I'd have Gnus do mail-splitting into
a pseudo-newsgroup, if you will. However,
I only got a small fraction of the traffic.
I cancelled the subscription, didn't get
a confirmation [1], but I think the traffic
seased completely anyhow around then, for that
or some other reason.

Then after a while Gmane was up again thanks to
Lars and the other guys efforts and I haven't
had any problems from where I'm looking
since then.

I don't know if this contributed to anyone's
understanding of whatever this problem is, but
it is what I remember anyway. But that much
I can and will do, God willing, I'll follow
this thread and if you have any questions I'll
be at your service :)


[1] Or maybe I sent a request-for-support
    message which supposedly would return an
    auto-reply (?), and this didn't happen -
    I don't remember, but I didn't get
    a response, I remember that much.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ralph Seichter]

* Emanuel Berg:

> But no, I don't know what's going on.

I'm not sure if it is just this latest message of yours, but I don't see
a DKIM signature? If the SPF check fails, as is common with mailing
lists, the zoho.eu's DMARC "reject" policy applies because there is no
DKIM sig that could potentially save the day (at least on well-behaved
mailing lists that don't rewrite subject/body).

Personally, I deliberately refrain from creating DMARC policies for
domains I use for mailing lists. There are mailing list admins who do it
right and play nice with DMARC (see the Postfix lists), but alas, that
happens rarely enough.

-Ralph

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Ralph Seichter wrote:

>> But no, I don't know what's going on.
>
> I'm not sure if it is just this latest
> message of yours, but I don't see a DKIM
> signature? If the SPF check fails, as is
> common with mailing lists, the zoho.eu's
> DMARC "reject" policy applies because there
> is no DKIM sig that could potentially save
> the day (at least on well-behaved mailing
> lists that don't rewrite subject/body).

By "DKIM signature", you mean the
"DKIM-Signature" header in the mail, right?
I certainly didn't configure that since
yesterday, but let's see how this message
turns up.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ralph Seichter]

* Emanuel Berg:

> By "DKIM signature", you mean the "DKIM-Signature" header in the mail,
> right?

Indeed.

> I certainly didn't configure that since yesterday, but let's see how
> this message turns up.

Well, a DKIM signature is not suddenly going to appear out of thin
air. ;-) It would take some work to set this up on your end.

-Ralph

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Ralph Seichter wrote:

>> By "DKIM signature", you mean the
>> "DKIM-Signature" header in the mail, right?
>
> Indeed.
>
>> I certainly didn't configure that since
>> yesterday, but let's see how this message
>> turns up.
>
> Well, a DKIM signature is not suddenly going
> to appear out of thin air. ;-) It would take
> some work to set this up on your end.

Yeah, but is this something that is mandatory
to have? Is this (the lack of a DKIM sig) the
explanation to the problem with my mail where
the ... yeah, what was problem with my mail
now again?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ralph Seichter]

* Emanuel Berg:

> Yeah, but is this something that is mandatory to have? Is this (the
> lack of a DKIM sig) the explanation to the problem with my mail [...]

Are you aware of how DMARC works, in detail? DMARC relies on both DKIM
and SPF. https://dmarcian.com/domain-checker/?domain=zoho.eu shows that
the DMARC policy for this domain is "reject". Since you don't use DKIM
signatures, it is down to only SPF, so if the SPF check fails, the DMARC
policy applies.

That means you ask the recipient MTA to reject all mail apparently
originating at zoho.eu whenever the SPF check is unsuccessful. Adding
DKIM to the mix is no silver bullet, but I personally would not publish
DMARC policies "quarantine" or "reject" had I only SPF at my disposal!

-Ralph

[DMARC Sucks!] (Was Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[황병희]

On Wed, Mar 13 2019, Ralph Seichter wrote:
> * Emanuel Berg:
>
>> Yeah, but is this something that is mandatory to have? Is this (the
>> lack of a DKIM sig) the explanation to the problem with my mail [...]
>
> Are you aware of how DMARC works, in detail? DMARC relies on both DKIM
> and SPF. https://dmarcian.com/domain-checker/?domain=zoho.eu shows that
> the DMARC policy for this domain is "reject". Since you don't use DKIM
> signatures, it is down to only SPF, so if the SPF check fails, the DMARC
> policy applies.
>
> That means you ask the recipient MTA to reject all mail apparently
> originating at zoho.eu whenever the SPF check is unsuccessful. Adding
> DKIM to the mix is no silver bullet, but I personally would not publish
> DMARC policies "quarantine" or "reject" had I only SPF at my disposal!

Indeed, i don't like DMARC's alignment policy. So i removed all dmarc stuffs
in my domain's DNS. Actually she breaks all mails from Mailing lists.

-- 
^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Ralph Seichter wrote:

>> Yeah, but is this something that is
>> mandatory to have? Is this (the lack of
>> a DKIM sig) the explanation to the problem
>> with my mail [...]
>
> Are you aware of how DMARC works, in
> detail? [...]

Easily. Because DMARC relies on both DKIM and
SPF, and because DKIM is u/a, that means the
check comes down to SPF only. Can't have that.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Ralph Seichter wrote:

> Well, a DKIM signature is not suddenly going
> to appear out of thin air. ;-) It would take
> some work to set this up on your end.

It is a DMARK issue alright, but unless
I create mayhem beyond measure I won't do
anything about it.

Do tell if I do/should.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ralph Seichter]

* Emanuel Berg:

> Do tell if I do/should.

It's a free universe, but I recommend either implementing DMARC in full
or not bothering with it at all. If you are just curious, you can define
a policy of "none" and collect reports without anything bad happening to
your mail. Policies of "quarantine" or "reject" do have consequences.

If you are not planning on sending mass mailings to Google et al, and if
you don't routinely see abuse of zoho.eu as an originating domain, DMARC
has little practical benefit for you -- IMO.

-Ralph

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Ralph Seichter wrote:

>> Do tell if I do/should.
>
> It's a free universe, but I recommend either
> implementing DMARC in full or not bothering
> with it at all. If you are just curious, you
> can define a policy of "none" and collect
> reports without anything bad happening to
> your mail. Policies of "quarantine" or
> "reject" do have consequences.
>
> If you are not planning on sending mass
> mailings to Google et al, and if you don't
> routinely see abuse of zoho.eu as an
> originating domain, DMARC has little
> practical benefit for you

But is DMARC really something I can get going
exclusively on my computer and/or with
my client?

If it is, do you have a tutorial in the holster
how to do that?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ralph Seichter]

* Emanuel Berg:

> But is DMARC really something I can get going exclusively on my
> computer and/or with my client?

No. Who told you that? See https://dmarc.org/overview/ . Setting up
DMARC requires administrative access to DNS data for the originating
domain, and to the originating MTA. It is not rocket science, but it
takes some careful work, and like I said, if you don't send email
commercially, you probably don't need DMARC at all.

In any case, this thread has evolved to something completely unrelated
to Emacs, so I'd like to stop discussing it here.

-Ralph

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg]

Ralph Seichter wrote:

> In any case, this thread has evolved to
> something completely unrelated to Emacs, so
> I'd like to stop discussing it here.

OK, granted. For now...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ralph Seichter]

* Emanuel Berg:

> [...]

Followup on zoho.eu, this does not look ideal either:

Mar  6 18:14:21 ra postfix/tlsproxy[23936]: Anonymous TLS connection established from [185.20.209.254]:31106: TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384 (256/256 bits)
Mar  6 18:14:21 ra postfix/postscreen[23911]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from [185.20.209.254]:31106: 550 5.7.1 Service unavailable; client [185.20.209.254] blocked using hostkarma.junkemailfilter.com; from=<connectivity@zoho.com>, to=<abbot@monksofcool.net>, proto=ESMTP, helo=<sender21-mail.zoho.eu>

-Ralph

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bastian Beischer]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2019 at 11:29 AM Nate Bass <nw3455@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I compared my Gmail to the archives and I found that I wasn't
> receiving mail from one particular address moasenwood@zoho.eu and I
> think this caused me to bounce off the help-gnu-emacs mailing list.
>
> I started to miss messages on February 6 at 8:51 PST, while receiving
> all others on the mailing list. I missed at least one message each day
> from this address (25 missed total) until February 10 at 12:35 PST
> when I received a
> message stating:
> > Your membership in the mailing list help-gnu-emacs has been disabled
> > due to excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was dated
> > 10-Feb-2019.
>

Hi Nate,

I just wanted to say that I am suffering from the very same problem
since weeks. I'm using gmail and I've had to re-enable my membership
for help-gnu-emacs quite a few times already. Also I'm not receiving
any mail from Emanuel any more, although I used to a while back. It's
a shame really, his messages often made me smile :-)

I don't know much about the technical side of this, but it is
inconvenient. I also wonder how it is even possible that mail from
someone else causes my membership to be disabled?

Cheers
Bastian

>
> I did receive messages (about 5 or 6) from moasenwood@zoho.eu
> interspersed amongst
> the missed messages. I checked the headers of the ones I received and
> the ones I missed but I could not find any meaningful difference.
>
> I compared my Gmail to the archives by diffing the mbox files
> (https://superuser.com/a/990431/644460 if anyone wants to try) to be
> sure that I wasn't missing messages from any other address. I even
> checked Janurary and Feburary of emacs-devel and I could only find
> missed messages from moasenwood@zoho.eu.
>
> I can also confirm that, upon rejoining help-gnu-emacs on February 17,
> I did not receive this message
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-02/msg00312.html
> dated February 20. Maybe other users can check if they have this in
> their inbox and report if you are using gmail or something else?
>
> This issue raises two questions.
> 1) Why was I not receiving message from that address. Any thoughts
> Emanuel? I did receive your original post "Gmane up again" and some
> but not all of the following replies, if that helps.
> 2) Should the automatic bounce processing system be changed? I think
> my experience confirms that help-gnu-emacs has a bounce score
> threshold of 5.
>

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Noam Postavsky]

On Thu, 23 May 2019 at 10:49, Bastian Beischer
<bastian.beischer@gmail.com> wrote:

> I just wanted to say that I am suffering from the very same problem
> since weeks. I'm using gmail and I've had to re-enable my membership
> for help-gnu-emacs quite a few times already. Also I'm not receiving
> any mail from Emanuel any more, although I used to a while back. It's
> a shame really, his messages often made me smile :-)
>
> I don't know much about the technical side of this, but it is
> inconvenient. I also wonder how it is even possible that mail from
> someone else causes my membership to be disabled?

It seems that Google doesn't like something about Emanuel's emails, so
it rejects them as spam (I notice that I sometimes do get messages
from Emanuel, but they always land in the spam folder). Then
help-gnu-emacs sees all the rejected messages and decides that the
subscribed address is no good, and disables the subscription.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Noam Postavsky wrote:

> It seems that Google doesn't like something
> about Emanuel's emails, so it rejects them as
> spam

I've been known to many as many things, but
a tin foil hat hasn't been one of them. To be
a tech person, my level of paranoia and
inclination to conspiracy-thinking should be
close to zero.

Here tho, is it conceivable that Gmail blocks
Zoho _not_ because it is some
darkwater-hacker-wannabe stuff, which it isn't,
but on the contrary because it is a mainstream
commercial service, i.e. a competitor
to Gmail?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

> Here tho, is it conceivable that Gmail blocks
> Zoho _not_ because it is some
> darkwater-hacker-wannabe stuff, which it
> isn't, but on the contrary because it is
> a mainstream commercial service, i.e.
> a competitor to Gmail?

Nah, I think the explanation to the problem is
that I have sent too many mails to too many
people, crossposting on Usenet, Gmane and so
on. Gmail algorithms cannot believe that's
something a non-spammer can or would do.

But I've been underestimated my entire life :)

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2369 bytes --]

Noam Postavsky wrote:
> It seems that Google doesn't like something about Emanuel's emails, so
> it rejects them as spam (I notice that I sometimes do get messages
> from Emanuel, but they always land in the spam folder). Then
> help-gnu-emacs sees all the rejected messages and decides that the
> subscribed address is no good, and disables the subscription.

That is exactly correct.  The problem is sending domains that are
setting a strict DMARC policy.  And receiving sites are also setting a
strict DMARC policy.

https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DMARC discusses the woeful situation.

The current wisdom has appeared that mailing lists must perform what
the Mailman configuration calls a Munge From policy action.  Here is
what Mailman says about it.

  dmarc_moderation_action (privacy): Action to take when anyone posts to the list from a domain with a DMARC Reject/Quarantine Policy.
  Munge From -- applies the from_is_list Munge From transformation to these messages.
  Wrap Message -- applies the from_is_list Wrap Message transformation to these messages.
  Reject -- this automatically rejects the message by sending a bounce notice to the post's author. The text of the bounce notice can be configured by you.
  Discard -- this simply discards the message, with no notice sent to the post's author.

I have been avoiding it due to the invasive changes but just can't
postpone it any longer.  A few minutes ago I flipped this setting for
help-gnu-emacs to "Munge From".  The result is that all mail from the
mailing list where the sender has a strict DMARC policy will be
mangled to come from the mailing list address instead of the original
sender address.  This can be seen from Emanuel's latest emails where
it uses the mailing list for the mail address and replaces the name
field with the name followed by "via help-gnu-emacs".

Mailman then adds a Reply-To header back to the original sender.  For
this mailing list that is new.  I also think undesirable.  I feel
certain it will have the effect of many people posting getting a
direct reply back to them instead of back to the mailing list.  But
that is the Mailman setting and a consequence of the strict DMARC
policies of the sender.

Hopefully this will allow all of those people using email service
providers that have enabled strict DMARC policies to continue to make
use of the mailing list.

Bob


[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Bob Proulx wrote:

> Mailman then adds a Reply-To header back to
> the original sender. For this mailing list
> that is new. I also think undesirable. I feel
> certain it will have the effect of many
> people posting getting a direct reply back to
> them instead of back to the mailing list.
> But that is the Mailman setting and
> a consequence of the strict DMARC policies of
> the sender.

"The sender" - you mean me, well, my e-mail
service provider, anyway? So Zoho is incorrect
blaming Gmail?

But, why would "strict policies" of the
sender's part make others block the messages as
spam? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

I'm too ignorant in this business, but if you
(or anyone else for that matter) were to
summarize the problem in like a couple of
sentences, I can tell Zoho about it.
Perhaps it'll help.

But perhaps it's just a matter of time until
the problem reappears for me, or for someone
else...

Ha! I always cause problems here! First it was
the Usenet newsgroup (gnu.emacs.help, breaking
threads), and now this. Interesting also that
Usenet and Zoho probably are as far as two
things can be from each other...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:
>...

I am going to need to change my reply filters to fix those up or it is
going to annoy me forever.

Emanuel Berg wrote:
> "The sender" - you mean me, well, my e-mail
> service provider, anyway? So Zoho is incorrect
> blaming Gmail?

Zoho definitely should not be blaming Gmail.  Zoho has instructed
Gmail to reject any mail from zoho.com that is being relayed through
mailing lists.  Or anywhere else either.

  $ dig _dmarc.zoho.eu txt +short
  "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0; rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu; ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

Previously Gmail, Yahoo, others did not enforce this instruction.
They now do.

This is one of those things that takes two agents to cooperate in the
action.  The sender must set a strict dmarc policy.  The receiver must
strictly enforce the dmarc policy.  If either does not then the mail
is delivered.  If *both* do then the mail is rejected.  Earlier Yahoo
turned on strict enforcement.  More recently Gmail turned on strict
enforcement.  Here are some references to start:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMARC

And I pretty much agree with:

  https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/kL24edUthAOuHuwK3ZnpFkCXduI

> Ha! I always cause problems here! First it was
> the Usenet newsgroup (gnu.emacs.help, breaking
> threads), and now this. Interesting also that
> Usenet and Zoho probably are as far as two
> things can be from each other...

Someone must do the destructive testing. :-)

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Bob Proulx wrote:

>> "The sender" - you mean me, well, my e-mail
>> service provider, anyway? So Zoho is
>> incorrect blaming Gmail?
>
> Zoho definitely should not be blaming Gmail.
> Zoho has instructed Gmail to reject any mail
> from zoho.com that is being relayed through
> mailing lists. Or anywhere else either.
>
>   $ dig _dmarc.zoho.eu txt +short
>   "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
> rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
> ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"
>
> Previously Gmail, Yahoo, others did not
> enforce this instruction. They now
> do. [...]

I have sent a message to Zoho with the
following text. Let's see what they say.

    Zoho Cares wrote:

    > To resolve this, you may contact the
    > recipient through alternative means to
    > mark your email as NOT SPAM and also
    > raise a request to Gmail using the below
    > link [...]

    This issue has been figured out at
    help-gnu-emacs/gmane.emacs.help in a thread
    that (re)started with this message. [1]

    Later on in the thread, the explanation was
    provided:

        Zoho definitely should not be blaming
        Gmail. Zoho has instructed Gmail to
        reject any mail from zoho.com that is
        being relayed through mailing lists.
        Or anywhere else either.

          $ dig _dmarc.zoho.eu txt +short
          "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
        rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
        ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

        Previously Gmail, Yahoo, others did not
        enforce this instruction. They now
        do. [...] [2]


    [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-05/msg00473.html

    [2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-05/msg00481.html
        NB the hidden addresses should be as
        above, i.e. dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Bob Proulx wrote:

>   $ dig _dmarc.zoho.eu txt +short
>   "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
> rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
> ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

Afer figuring out this command, which wasn't
easy [1], I get two different replies from
executing it. This is by far the most common
one:


    "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0; rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu; ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

    ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY; status: NXDOMAIN; id: 10174
    ;; Flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1; ANSWER: 0; AUTHORITY: 0; ADDITIONAL: 0

    ;; QUESTION SECTION:
    ;; v\=DMARC1\;p\=reject\;sp\=reject\;fo\=0\;rua\=mailto\:dmarc.reports.eu\@zoho.eu\;ruf\=mailto\:dmarc.reports.eu\@zoho.eu. 	IN	A

    ;; Received 122 B
    ;; Time 2019-05-24 07:27:26 CEST
    ;; From 192.168.10.1@53(UDP) in 1.0 ms


But once, one time, after several invocations I got this:


    "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0; rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu; ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

    ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY; status: NXDOMAIN; id: 14566
    ;; Flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1; ANSWER: 0; AUTHORITY: 1; ADDITIONAL: 0

    ;; QUESTION SECTION:
    ;; v\=DMARC1\;p\=reject\;sp\=reject\;fo\=0\;rua\=mailto\:dmarc.reports.eu\@zoho.eu\;ruf\=mailto\:dmarc.reports.eu\@zoho.eu. 	IN	A

    ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
    eu.                 	600	IN	SOA	nl.dns.eu. tech.eurid.eu. 1053404310 3600 1800 3600000 600

    ;; Received 176 B
    ;; Time 2019-05-24 07:25:22 CEST
    ;; From 192.168.10.1@53(UDP) in 28.0 ms


Questions:

    Why does one get two different replies?

    What does 122 B and 176 B mean?

    What does the authority section mean?

    Where can you see their mailing list policy?


[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7489

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[tomas]

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On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 07:36:37AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> 
> >   $ dig _dmarc.zoho.eu txt +short
> >   "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
> > rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
> > ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"
> 
> Afer figuring out this command, which wasn't
> easy [1], I get two different replies from
> executing it. This is by far the most common
> one:

[...]

>     ;; Received 122 B
>     ;; Time 2019-05-24 07:27:26 CEST
>     ;; From 192.168.10.1@53(UDP) in 1.0 ms
> 
> 
> But once, one time, after several invocations I got this:

[...]

>     ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
>     eu.                 	600	IN	SOA	nl.dns.eu. tech.eurid.eu. 1053404310 3600 1800 3600000 600
> 
>     ;; Received 176 B
>     ;; Time 2019-05-24 07:25:22 CEST
>     ;; From 192.168.10.1@53(UDP) in 28.0 ms
> 
> 
> Questions:
> 
>     Why does one get two different replies?

Because the second one has no "DNS authority section" [1]. As a background:
this DMARC (and DKIM and SPF) stuff uses DNS as a distributed database.

Your computer is set up to ask your local domain name server (192.168.10.1).
This one asks another server, and so on, until that recursion hits the server
which "knows" where dmarc.zoho.eu is.

But your local server isn't totally stupid and keeps (caches) that answer,
because it knows you and expects you to ask again: then it can answer
right away. But because he (she?)'s a truthful server, it will tell you:
"so-and-so told me" -- that's the authority section (I don't quite remember
whether dig shows you the authority section for cached answers or for fresh
ones).

Or something like that :-)

>     What does 122 B and 176 B mean?

That would mean bytes, I think. The size of the answer.

>     What does the authority section mean?

See above.

>     Where can you see their mailing list policy?

That should be the very first line of the DNS reply:

> v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0; rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu; ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu

(I can't say in detail what each of those things means, but there's quite
a bit of docs on that around)

That all said... I'd urge everyone to chose a mail provider who
cares about mail. The big ones, the "free" offers and your ISP
all want to kill mail because there's no money in it.

Since they can't kill it directly, they starve it. Spam (and
the corresponding anti-spam measures) are their allies in that.

There are small mail providers who take a very affordable amount
(here in DE typically 1EUR/month) and actually know what they
are doing (e.g. posteo.de, mailbox.org). Consider supporting
those.

Cheers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System#Authoritative_name_server
-- tomás

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

tomas wrote:

> Because the second one has no "DNS authority
> section" [1]. As a background: this DMARC
> (and DKIM and SPF) stuff uses DNS as
> a distributed database.
>
> Your computer is set up to ask your local
> domain name server (192.168.10.1). This one
> asks another server, and so on, until that
> recursion hits the server which "knows" where
> dmarc.zoho.eu is.
>
> But your local server isn't totally stupid
> and keeps (caches) that answer, because it
> knows you and expects you to ask again: then
> it can answer right away. But because he
> (she?)'s a truthful server, it will tell you:
> "so-and-so told me" -- that's the authority
> section (I don't quite remember whether dig
> shows you the authority section for cached
> answers or for fresh ones).
>
> Or something like that :-)

If it works like that, why doesn't it keep at
it until it gets the authority reply?
Perhaps there is a setting for that...

>> What does 122 B and 176 B mean?
>
> That would mean bytes, I think. The size of
> the answer.

Aha, great!

>> Where can you see their mailing list policy?
>
> That should be the very first line of the DNS
> reply:
>
>> v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
>> rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
>> ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu

Isn't that is the _query_?

> That all said... I'd urge everyone to chose
> a mail provider who cares about mail. The big
> ones, the "free" offers and your ISP all want
> to kill mail because there's no money in it.

With ads, side- and extension services that
aren't free of charge, the accumulation of user
data, and so on, there is tons of money
in mail.

> Since they can't kill it directly, they
> starve it. Spam (and the corresponding
> anti-spam measures) are their allies in that.

Tin foil hats on everyone :)

> There are small mail providers who take
> a very affordable amount (here in DE
> typically 1EUR/month) and actually know what
> they are doing

For all their technical superiority, they sure
don't charge much...

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1381 bytes --]

On Fri, May 24, 2019 at 10:51:35AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:

[...]

> If it works like that, why doesn't it keep at
> it until it gets the authority reply?
> Perhaps there is a setting for that...

No, caching makes sense. Each DNS record has a
field stating for how long it is expected to be
valid (TTL) to ease such decisions.

[...]

> With ads, side- and extension services that
> aren't free of charge, the accumulation of user
> data, and so on, there is tons of money
> in mail.

Big players prefer silos, where they can keep
their sheep^H^H^H users captive. Watch the instant
messenger space to see all the anti-patterns of
the pre-Internet age emerge all over again.

> > Since they can't kill it directly, they
> > starve it. Spam (and the corresponding
> > anti-spam measures) are their allies in that.
> 
> Tin foil hats on everyone :)

Sometimes they are justified. Remember: just because
you're paranoid it doesn't mean that they aren't after
you :)

> > There are small mail providers who take
> > a very affordable amount (here in DE
> > typically 1EUR/month) and actually know what
> > they are doing
> 
> For all their technical superiority, they sure
> don't charge much...

They don't see their goal in growth, but in providing
a good service while being financially sustainable.

Cheers
-- t

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

tomas wrote:

>> If it works like that, why doesn't it keep
>> at it until it gets the authority reply?
>> Perhaps there is a setting for that...
>
> No, caching makes sense. Each DNS record has
> a field stating for how long it is expected
> to be valid (TTL) to ease such decisions.

Yes, I know, none of that made sense to begin
with since I thought the reply was the query
and used it in the command, so that was why
I got so strange replies. Now that I get
replies that make sense, I don't care to
analyze those that came from an incorrect use
(read) of the command :)

>> With ads, side- and extension services that
>> aren't free of charge, the accumulation of
>> user data, and so on, there is tons of money
>> in mail.
>
> Big players prefer silos, where they can keep
> their sheep^H^H^H users captive. Watch the
> instant messenger space to see all the
> anti-patterns of the pre-Internet age emerge
> all over again.

??

?#1: Do people still use IM? I remember
ICQ (I Seek You; Israel 1996 [1]). Those were
good days - at least if you only remember the
good stuff!

?#2: What do you mean "all the anti-patterns of
the pre-Internet age emerge all over again." It
sounds interesting anyway so do tell...

>> For all their technical superiority, they
>> sure don't charge much...
>
> They don't see their goal in growth, but in
> providing a good service while being
> financially sustainable.

No doubt they are good guys. Paying for
a service isn't something I would never do for
principal reasons, it is more like it seems
like trouble doing it practically. I mean, how
do you do it? Literally?


[1] https://dataswamp.org/~incal/COMP-HIST

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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1228 bytes --]

On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 06:40:05AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:

[...]

> ?#1: Do people still use IM? I remember
> ICQ (I Seek You; Israel 1996 [1]). Those were
> good days - at least if you only remember the
> good stuff!

They do use very diverse, monstrous mutations of IM, all
incompatible with each other: whatsapp, instagram, telegram,
heck, twitter is also a take in the IM theme.

Most of them go through a centralised, corporate-controlled,
risk-capital fueled service. Do I need to say more?

> ?#2: What do you mean "all the anti-patterns of
> the pre-Internet age emerge all over again." It
> sounds interesting anyway so do tell...

You had a fragmented landscape of "online services" (AOL,
CompuServe etc.) and you could only "see" the inhabitants
of your fragment of the world [1].

> No doubt they are good guys. Paying for
> a service isn't something I would never do for
> principal reasons, it is more like it seems
> like trouble doing it practically. I mean, how
> do you do it? Literally?

Bank transfer? Heck -- posteo does care that much about
your privacy that you even can pay in cash (for 12 months
in advance).

Cheers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_service#History
-- t

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the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

tomas wrote:

>> ?#2: What do you mean "all the anti-patterns
>> of the pre-Internet age emerge all over
>> again." It sounds interesting anyway so do
>> tell...
>
> You had a fragmented landscape of "online
> services" (AOL, CompuServe etc.) and you
> could only "see" the inhabitants of your
> fragment of the world [...]

Oh, no! That can't happen! I remember years ago
writing many times about the future all
interface-independent use of computer services.
Everyone could use everything, with their own
client(s) - just like I/we do with Gnus for
mail and Gmane, ERC for IRC, Dired for the
filesystem, Emacs-w3m for the web, Emacs for...
uhm, editing files, and so on - because we like
it, we prefer it that way - in much the same
way, I thought in the future, and not a so
distant future, everyone could do the same -
i.e., access any type of service with their own
tools - and if there weren't tools to their
liking, they had suddenly something interesting
to do, much like we do with Emacs (some
configure, some extend, some do [M]ELPA, some
do the real deal, some do a little of
everything). You're saying this is not only
incorrect, but the _opposite_ is happening?

>> ?#1: Do people still use IM? I remember ICQ
>> (I Seek You; Israel 1996 [1]). Those were
>> good days - at least if you only remember
>> the good stuff!
>
> They do use very diverse, monstrous mutations
> of IM, all incompatible with each other:
> whatsapp, instagram, telegram, heck, twitter
> is also a take in the IM theme.
>
> Most of them go through a centralised,
> corporate-controlled, risk-capital fueled
> service. Do I need to say more?

I already know that I don't like it.
But absolutely do say more if you can/would
like to...

>> No doubt they are good guys. Paying for
>> a service isn't something I would never do
>> for principal reasons, it is more like it
>> seems like trouble doing it practically.
>> I mean, how do you do it? Literally?
>
> Bank transfer? Heck -- posteo does care that
> much about your privacy that you even can pay
> in cash (for 12 months in advance).

OK, next time I get into problems with mail
I'll sed 12EUR to DE ... only I can still use
Gnus, right?

:)

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1013 bytes --]

On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 10:03:03AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:
> tomas wrote:
> 
> >> ?#2: What do you mean "all the anti-patterns
> >> of the pre-Internet age emerge all over
> >> again." It sounds interesting anyway so do
> >> tell...
> >
> > You had a fragmented landscape of "online
> > services" [...]

> Oh, no! That can't happen! I remember years ago
> writing many times about the future all
> interface-independent use of computer services.
> Everyone could use everything, with their own
> client(s) [...]

Facebook bought whatsapp for $16 billion (that is 16 * 10^9 dollars).
How do you think they are going to monetize it? By letting their users
change providers painlessly?

Likewise they bought instagram for $1 billion. They are /betting their
farm/ on closed platforms. What do you think their shareholders think
about e-mail?

There's a huge financial incentive in poisoning the well (aka "open
platforms") to sell bottled water.

Cheers
-- tomás

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

tomas wrote:

> Facebook bought whatsapp for $16 billion
> (that is 16 * 10^9 dollars). How do you think
> they are going to monetize it? By letting
> their users change providers painlessly?
>
> Likewise they bought instagram for
> $1 billion.

Wait, don't tell me! That's

$ echo $(( 1 * 10**9 ))
1000000000

dollars, right?

> They are /betting their farm/ on closed
> platforms. What do you think their
> shareholders think about e-mail?

I don't know, this monetizing and shareholders
aspect isn't really my domain. (NB: This is
another way of saying I know nothing about it.)

But It sounds strange that people would go from
e-mail to Facebook and Instagram?
Who does that?

Also aren't there anti-monopoly rules and
regulations, "checks and balances", in the US
to prevent this sort'a thing from happening in
the first place?

BTW where do you read this kind of news?
"Linux Pro"? (ISSN 1471-5678) The last time
I tried to read it at the local library, I gave
up, sine it was more like a business magazine
than a computer ditto. (There _were_
a chronicle of the Linux kernel devel scene and
an article on Perl, in all honesty.)

> There's a huge financial incentive in
> poisoning the well (aka "open platforms") to
> sell bottled water.

This sounds exciting! Let's go to cyber-war!
Remember, hacking is more than just a crime.
It's a survival trait! [1]


[1] https://sfy.ru/?script=hackers

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

> But It sounds strange that people would go
> from e-mail to Facebook and Instagram?
> Who does that?

Are there data the number of e-mails sent
worldwide are decreasing?

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Yuri Khan]

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 12:36 PM Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs
<help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> > But It sounds strange that people would go
> > from e-mail to Facebook and Instagram?
> > Who does that?
>
> Are there data the number of e-mails sent
> worldwide are decreasing?

They are not. It’s just that most of those emails are notifications
about something that happened elsewhere. “You’ve got a new
{message|mention|comment} in {Slack|Reddit|Facebook|JIRA|review
system|internet store|that PHP-based forum|…}, {in order to read
it|here’s a copy of its text for your convenience, but in order to
reply}, please follow this link”.

Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Yuri Khan wrote:

>>> But It sounds strange that people would go
>>> from e-mail to Facebook and Instagram?
>>> Who does that?
>>
>> Are there data the number of e-mails sent
>> worldwide are decreasing?
>
> They are not. It’s just that most of those
> emails are notifications about something that
> happened elsewhere. “You’ve got a new
> {message|mention|comment} in
> {Slack|Reddit|Facebook|JIRA|review
> system|internet store|that PHP-based
> forum|…}, {in order to read it|here’s a copy
> of its text for your convenience, but in
> order to reply}, please follow this link”.

OK, but how do you know this? Where do you read
this stuff? Is there a magazine or newsletter
I've overlooked?

Actually that doesn't sound impossible since
I only read bicycle magazines...

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 556 bytes --]

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 10:29:05AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:

[...]

> OK, but how do you know this? Where do you read
> this stuff? Is there a magazine or newsletter
> I've overlooked?

It's seeeeekrit. If I told you, I'd have to kill you ;-D

> Actually that doesn't sound impossible since
> I only read bicycle magazines...

Those don't talk about such unimportant things.

I'd recommend https://lwn.net (consider supporting them).
Also slashdot or reddit -- but those are in another class:
more mass, far less quality.

Cheers
-- t

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

tomas wrote:

> I'd recommend https://lwn.net (consider
> supporting them).

Thanks. You always tell me to support things.
I tell you what, next time I'm in Berlin I'll
bring a briefcase with money and dump somewhere
in Kreuzberg for you to pick up! You have to
say to the Turkish vendor of Döner Kebab -
"Today, the sun is shining" - then he will
respond, "Yes, but what about tomorrow?" and
you'll get it. Just be sure you do it a sunny
day otherwise the counter-espionage will bundle
you up in no-time.

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Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 464 bytes --]

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 10:56:00AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:
> tomas wrote:
> 
> > I'd recommend https://lwn.net (consider
> > supporting them).
> 
> Thanks. You always tell me to support things.
> I tell you what, next time I'm in Berlin I'll
> bring a briefcase with money and dump somewhere
> in Kreuzberg for you to pick up!

I can't afford Kreuzberg: too expensive ;-P

But I do accept donations, mind you...

Cheers
-- t

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answer from Zoho (was: Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces))

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

I got an answer from Zoho after pointing to the
thread where it was said they were incorrect
blaming Gmail for what happened. They write

    Answered by

    XXX

    Hello,

    Apologies for the trouble. We explained
    this during the initial conversation.

    When an email sent through zoho.com/zoho.eu
    is not authenticated it could possibly
    be rejected.

    Meanwhile, we would like to inform you that
    we have made some changes on our end for
    the domain zoho.com to prevent abuse of our
    email service through zoho.com. We have
    listed the same in the below post for your
    reference:

    https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/preventing-spam-emails-using-zoho-com-enforcing-spf-dkim-and-dmarc-for-zoho-com-accounts

    Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
    Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP
    server to avoid such inconveniences.

    Hope this helps. Do write to us for
    any queries.

To this, I, not bothering to hide my annoyance
with the whole affair and with them in
particular, so to this I answered this, hoping
I interpreted the material presented here in
help-gnu-emacs/gmane.emacs.help in a correct
way:

Zoho Cares wrote:

    When an email sent through zoho.com/zoho.eu
    is not authenticated it could possibly
    be rejected.

It will _always_ be rejected when sent from
a mailing list or a newsgroup to a receiver who
complies with your own policy. You can confirm
this with the following commands:

$ host -t txt _dmarc.zoho.eu
_dmarc.zoho.eu descriptive text "v=DMARC1;
p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

and

$ dig _dmarc.zoho.eu txt +short
"v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

Did you read this thread? It is explained in
full [1].
  
    Meanwhile, we would like to inform you that
    we have made some changes on our end for
    the domain zoho.com to prevent abuse of our
    email service through zoho.com. We have
    listed the same in the below post for your
    reference:

      https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/preventing-spam-emails-using-zoho-com-enforcing-spf-dkim-and-dmarc-for-zoho-com-accounts

Only that link doesn't work for me: it
shows a blank tab.

    Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
    Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP server
    to avoid such inconveniences.

I'm not ever going to use your web interface.
I've been using Emacs Gnus for ~10 years now
and put many man hours into configuring and
extending and learing to use it to my liking.
If I had known one was supposed to use the
web interface with Zoho, I would never have
registered in the first place.

Anyway now they have put a fix in the
help-gnu-emacs/gmane.emacs.help machinery so
when I send to them, it is resent by them, but
without the DMARC policy of yours, so it'll
still reach Gmail and other users.

Is this a correct understanding of what
just happened? If it isn't - too late,
I already sent him the reply :)


[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-05/msg00461.html

-- 
underground experts united
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Re: the future of the computer world (was Re: answer from Zoho)

[Van L]

The early stage backing in FB and Alibaba numbering USD$5K, USD$50K
really paid off handsomely.  The returns from USD$50K went to Africa in
an investment vehicle that rhymes with Napster.  Napser, IIRC.

WSJ or FT are sources of this kind of information if you can afford to.

The time spanning from UFC32 to UFC238 years mark the moment when
RT satellite tracking screensaver eye candy, went from that to
SpaceX StarLink's mega constellation first baby step.

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
           "you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out" - Donald J. Trump

Re: the future of the computer world (was Re: answer from Zoho)

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Van L wrote:

> WSJ or FT are sources of this kind of
> information if you can afford to.

But if it appears in those papers
(Wall Street Journal and Financial Times?) it
is already not a news item any longer.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: answer from Zoho

[Alberto Luaces]

Emanuel Berg writes:

>     Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
>     Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP server
>     to avoid such inconveniences.
>
> I'm not ever going to use your web interface.

Sorry, it isn't clear to me if you are using their STMP server.

-- 
Alberto

Re: answer from Zoho

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Alberto Luaces wrote:

>>> Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
>>> Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP
>>> server to avoid such inconveniences.
>>
>> I'm not ever going to use your
>> web interface.
>
> Sorry, it isn't clear to me if you are using
> their STMP server.

It isn't to me, either :)

But you refer to this, right

    smtpmail-smtp-server is a variable defined
    in ‘smtpmail.el’. Its value is
    "smtp.zoho.eu"

?

Good point, I'll write to them and clarify...

-- 
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https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: answer from Zoho

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> Alberto Luaces wrote:
>
>>>> Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
>>>> Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP
>>>> server to avoid such inconveniences.
>>>
>>> I'm not ever going to use your
>>> web interface.
>>
>> Sorry, it isn't clear to me if you are using
>> their STMP server.
>
> It isn't to me, either :)
>
> But you refer to this, right
>
>     smtpmail-smtp-server is a variable defined
>     in ‘smtpmail.el’. Its value is
>     "smtp.zoho.eu"
>
> ?
>
> Good point, I'll write to them and clarify...

But that's not the problem -- I'm sure emails that Emanuel is sending
directly from Gnus via Zoho's SMTP servers are not causing anyone any
trouble.

The problem is emails he's sending to this mailing list: they were once
sent on from the mailing list's server, but with Emanuel's address in
the envelope from, which is exactly what Zoho's DMARC policy doesn't
allow. Now the mailing list is configured so that, when it sees that
policy in place, it uses the mailing list itself in the envelope from
instead, which is legal.

At least, I hope I've understood that correctly!

What I had assumed was, if we're all using nntp, this might not be an
issue. But obviously there's much I don't know, as well!

Eric

Re: answer from Zoho

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Eric Abrahamsen wrote:

>>> Sorry, it isn't clear to me if you are
>>> using their STMP server.
>>
>> It isn't to me, either :) But you refer to
>> this, right smtpmail-smtp-server is
>> a variable defined in ‘smtpmail.el’.
>> Its value is "smtp.zoho.eu" ? Good point,
>> I'll write to them and clarify...
>
> But that's not the problem -- I'm sure emails
> that Emanuel is sending directly from Gnus
> via Zoho's SMTP servers are not causing
> anyone any trouble. [...]

Yes, I understand, but I thought I'd tell him
anyway so he doesn't have to come back and ask
again.

Better to answer all questions, including the
irrelevant ones.

(Well, in all honesty he couldn't have known it
was an irrelevant question. Or he could, had he
read the thread from this newsgroup
I referenced last time I spoke to him.
But maybe the support people at Zoho are
stressed-out 3rd world people who aren't
allowed to take the proper time to do a good
job...)

-- 
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Re: answer from Zoho

[Alberto Luaces]

Emanuel Berg writes:

> Alberto Luaces wrote:
>
>>>> Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
>>>> Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP
>>>> server to avoid such inconveniences.
>>>
>>> I'm not ever going to use your
>>> web interface.
>>
>> Sorry, it isn't clear to me if you are using
>> their STMP server.
>
> It isn't to me, either :)
>
> But you refer to this, right
>
>     smtpmail-smtp-server is a variable defined
>     in ‘smtpmail.el’. Its value is
>     "smtp.zoho.eu"
>
> ?

Correct.  That is what I understand when they say «authenticated SMTP
server».

> Good point, I'll write to them and clarify...

-- 
Alberto

Re: answer from Zoho

[Alberto Luaces]

Oops... I didn't read Eric's message before posting this, please
disregard.
-- 
Alberto

Re: answer from Zoho

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

I have got another e-mail from Zoho. (BTW, how
outrageous of them to first to blame Gmail,
when what happens is they (Gmail) actually
respect their (Zoho's) own policy, then when
I point this out they insist I should change
e-mail client!?!)


    We would like to confirm that if the emails
    are sent from mail.zoho.com, the emails
    will be delivered without any issues. Also,
    if you use any email clients like Outlook,
    macmail with the Zoho SMTP server settings,
    there will be no issues with the email
    delivery. In case, if you use such email
    clients with different SMTP server
    settings, the emails will be rejected
    according to the DMARC policy. This is what
    we tried to explain in the forum post.
    Kindly try sending emails only through Zoho
    Webmail or from an Authenticated SMTP
    server to avoid such inconveniences.
    Refer here for the server settings.


To this, I replied, again hoping I got it
right, since I'm no expert on a lot of things,
e-mail included:


    Zoho Cares wrote:

    + We would like to confirm that if the emails
    + are sent from mail.zoho.com, the emails will
    + be delivered without any issues. Also, if you
    + use any email clients like Outlook, macmail
    + with the Zoho SMTP server settings

    I use Emacs Gnus. The SMTP server is set to
    smtp.zoho.eu with port 587 (for starttls).

    + there will be no issues with the email
    + delivery. In case, if you use such email
    + clients with different SMTP server settings,
    + the emails will be rejected according to the
    + DMARC policy.

    According to the thread [1], the reason the
    mails aren't delivered or end up in the spam
    directory, is your own policy, which is the
    mails should be rejected if resent, and this is
    what happens when they are sent to a mailing
    list (and possibly to a Usenet newsgroup or
    gateway (e.g., NNTP with Gmane)).

    Previously, Gmail, and others, have chosen to
    disregard this policy setting (in general, i.e.
    not just you doing it), but now they respect it
    - i.e., my mails, sent from you, via the list,
    gets rejected when they arrive at Gmail and
    other hosts.

    Consider the output of the following
    commands: [2 - full source]


    $ dig-zoho
    "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
    rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
    ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"


    $ host-zoho
    _dmarc.zoho.eu descriptive text "v=DMARC1;
    p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
    rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
    ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"


    [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2019-05/msg00473.html
    [2] https://dataswamp.org/~incal/conf/.zsh/mail

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: the future of the computer world (was: Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Yuri Khan]

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 3:29 PM Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs
<help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> wrote:

> >> Are there data the number of e-mails sent
> >> worldwide are decreasing?
> >
> > They are not. It’s just that most of those
> > emails are notifications about something that
> > happened elsewhere. “You’ve got a new
> > {message|mention|comment} in
> > {Slack|Reddit|Facebook|JIRA|review
> > system|internet store|that PHP-based
> > forum|…}, {in order to read it|here’s a copy
> > of its text for your convenience, but in
> > order to reply}, please follow this link”.
>
> OK, but how do you know this? Where do you read
> this stuff? Is there a magazine or newsletter
> I've overlooked?

I don’t have to read that. I experience it. Apart from mailing lists
and an occasional email from friends and family, all my incoming mail
is like that.

(Also, whenever at my job somebody starts an email discussion, I wish
they would use Slack for that. Because corporate users cannot into
proper email quoting.)

Re: the future of the computer world

[Stefan Monnier]

> You're saying this is not only incorrect, but the _opposite_
> is happening?

No he's just saying that this future has come and gone already.


        Stefan

Re: the future of the computer world

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> You're saying this is not only incorrect,
>> but the _opposite_ is happening?
>
> No he's just saying that this future has come
> and gone already.

Then where are we, right now? In some sort
of limbo?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Van L]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

>> > Since they can't kill it directly, they
>> > starve it. Spam (and the corresponding
>> > anti-spam measures) are their allies in that.
>> 
>> Tin foil hats on everyone :)
>
> Sometimes they are justified. Remember: just because
> you're paranoid it doesn't mean that they aren't after
> you :)

The term of art is to jump the shark when it suddenly inevitably must appear.

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
          "I don't believe any anything that the media say." - Ali Abdelaziz

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 258 bytes --]

On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 07:17:48PM +1000, Van L wrote:

[...]

> >> Tin foil hats on everyone :)
> >
> > Sometimes they are justified [...]
> 
> The term of art is to jump the shark when it suddenly inevitably must appear.

  <;-)

Cheers
-- t

[-- Attachment #2: Digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Van L wrote:

> The term of art is to jump the shark when it
> suddenly inevitably must appear.

Pah! :)

But I don't know how much of such changes are
actually in the exterior world and how much are
just us changing and thus experiencing it/them
differently...

Just like (in two days) 100 years ago with the
famous eclipse...

-- 
underground experts united
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https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Van L]

Emanuel Berg writes:

> Van L wrote:
>
>> The term of art is to jump the shark
>> when it suddenly inevitably must
>> appear.
>
> Pah! :)
>
> But I don't know how much of such
> changes are actually in the exterior
> world and how much are just us
> changing and thus experiencing
> it/them differently...

You might like to wrap your head around
how our experience of time differs. [1]

I know for a fact that when you ask MMA
fighters what's goin' on? for example,
Alexander "The Great" Volkanovski, or,
Israel "Stylebender" Adesanya, they
tell you time flows differently on the
inside (slower) than on the outside.

> Just like (in two days) 100 years ago
> with the famous eclipse...

At that time I. M. Pei was 2.
My grandpa was 2 years older.

Footnotes:
[1]  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004s9w
     Bergson and Time

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Van L wrote:

> I know for a fact that when you ask MMA
> fighters what's goin' on? for example,
> Alexander "The Great" Volkanovski, or, Israel
> "Stylebender" Adesanya, they tell you time
> flows differently on the inside (slower) than
> on the outside.

You don't need to be a muay Thai or
boxing champ to experience that. It is enough
to put on gloves and try to hit a guy roughly
your size and age. Or dispense with the wraps
and gloves if it is Kyokushin Karate.

"On the inside" in fighting lingo means
fighting close to your opponent with hooks and
uppercuts, including body shots. Knees to the
rib and diaphragm, if it is muay Thai, and
elbows upstairs.

Fighting "on the outside" is using range,
throwing jabs, crosses, and the occasional left
hook. Different types of kicks, of course.

-- 
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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

tomas wrote:

> That should be the very first line of the DNS
> reply:
>
>> v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0;
>> rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu;
>> ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu

No, you are right!

I thought that was part of Bob's command!

No wonder I got wierd results!

-- 
underground experts united
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https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> writes:

> Noam Postavsky wrote:
>> It seems that Google doesn't like something about Emanuel's emails, so
>> it rejects them as spam (I notice that I sometimes do get messages
>> from Emanuel, but they always land in the spam folder). Then
>> help-gnu-emacs sees all the rejected messages and decides that the
>> subscribed address is no good, and disables the subscription.
>
> That is exactly correct.  The problem is sending domains that are
> setting a strict DMARC policy.  And receiving sites are also setting a
> strict DMARC policy.
>
> https://wiki.list.org/DEV/DMARC discusses the woeful situation.
>
> The current wisdom has appeared that mailing lists must perform what
> the Mailman configuration calls a Munge From policy action.  Here is
> what Mailman says about it.

Oh, that's interesting! I was considering setting a stricter dmarc
policy on my own mail server, maybe I'll hold off on that. Thanks for
the background.

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Stefan Monnier]

>   dmarc_moderation_action (privacy): Action to take when anyone posts to the
> list from a domain with a DMARC Reject/Quarantine Policy.
>   Munge From -- applies the from_is_list Munge From transformation to these messages.
>   Wrap Message -- applies the from_is_list Wrap Message transformation to these messages.
>   Reject -- this automatically rejects the message by sending a bounce
> notice to the post's author. The text of the bounce notice can be configured
> by you.
>   Discard -- this simply discards the message, with no notice sent to the post's author.
>
> I have been avoiding it due to the invasive changes but just can't
> postpone it any longer.  A few minutes ago I flipped this setting for
> help-gnu-emacs to "Munge From".  The result is that all mail from the

This sucks, indeed, but AFAICT all public mailing-lists need to do that
nowadays since they will inevitably have subscribers on sites that use
a strict DMARC policy on reception and they will inevitably get messages
from readers on sites with a strict DMARC policy.


        Stefan

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Bastian Beischer wrote:

> Also I'm not receiving any mail from Emanuel
> any more, although I used to a while back.
> It's a shame really, his messages often made
> me smile :-)

Ha, thank you man :)

I have a mail provider, Zoho Mail (the zoho.eu
domain) - and this is not some
hacker-wannabe-darknet whatever, on the
contrary it is a mainstream commercial provider
with all those annoying features, a little
calendar and so on. But because I don't use
their web interface, but use it from Gnus,
I thought that would be fine. And it was/is,
until I heard people had problems with getting
my posts in their spam directories.

I have brought this up with Zoho, and they have
replied

    We also would like to confirm that all the
    email authentication records like SPF, DKIM,
    DMARC are properly configured from our end.

and then they blame Gmail.

I don't know what to do, really :(

-- 
underground experts united
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https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:

???

What just happened? Why does it say
"Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs"?

-- 
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Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx]

Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:
> Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:
> 
> ???
> 
> What just happened? Why does it say
> "Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs"?

Your message was an excellent test case for me as I had just changed
the Munge From setting on the mailing list.

  $ host -t txt _dmarc.zoho.eu
  _dmarc.zoho.eu descriptive text "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject; fo=0; rua=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu; ruf=mailto:dmarc.reports.eu@zoho.eu"

Mail from zoho.eu will only be delivered directly from zoho.eu.
Therefore, in order to be relayed through the mailing list, the
mailing list must mangle the From address into something different.
The mailing list can only become the sender itself.

Bob

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs]

Bob Proulx wrote:

> Mail from zoho.eu will only be delivered
> directly from zoho.eu. Therefore, in order to
> be relayed through the mailing list, the
> mailing list must mangle the From address
> into something different. The mailing list
> can only become the sender itself.

Far out!

Thanks!

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Stefan Monnier]

>> It is also not limited to gmail, AFAIR.
> Agreed.  It will be caused by any of the email service providers that
> decide to reject email for a while.

Isn't it "all" due to DKIM?
At least on the one mailing-list I setup here, my gmail users were
blocked because of DKIM (more specifically, whenever someone from
a DKIM-using domain sent a mail to that mailing-list, Gmail would then
see this mail coming from our mailing-list host instead of from one of the
DKIM-approved hosts for that sender) and would block it.

So I had to enable a specific hack in the mailing-list config, which
causes the headers to look different (the "From:" mentions the name of
the real sender but has the email address of the mailing-list, which is
rather annoying).  I don't see such munging in the gnu.org mailing
lists, so I suspect they suffer from the same problem.

Basically, the blocking done by gmail means they block all "normal"
mailing-list traffic and I'm not sure how it can be fixed "right".


        Stefan

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2019 13:03:19 -0500
> 
> >> It is also not limited to gmail, AFAIR.
> > Agreed.  It will be caused by any of the email service providers that
> > decide to reject email for a while.
> 
> Isn't it "all" due to DKIM?

Some of it, AFAIR.  Not all of it.

Alternative mail providers (was: Google Gmail mailing list bounces)

[Amin Bandali]

Thanking Eli, Bob, and everyone else volunteering their time to ensure a
smooth experience for users of lists.gnu.org, it may not be a bad time
to encourage people to move off of the few giant providers (which among
other things, continuously make things more difficult for everyone else)
and to try and run their own mail server for themselves and their family
and friends, or consider using smaller and less-hostile alternatives.

Examples of “small” community-based projects include disroot.org,
weho.st, and teknik.io.  Other providers worth looking into may be
Tutanota, ProtonMail, or FastMail.  Ultimately, though, I’d recommend
running your own if you can.  Container-based solutions like Mailu [1]
or mailcow [2] with sane defaults could be very decent starting points.

[1]: https://mailu.io
[2]: https://mailcow.email

There are relevant threads on the Trisquel forum every now and then:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/email-provider-riseupnet-or-disrootorg

Re: Alternative mail providers

[Van L]

Amin Bandali writes:

> Examples of “small”
> community-based projects include
> disroot.org, weho.st, and
> teknik.io.  Other providers worth
> looking into may be Tutanota,
> ProtonMail, or FastMail.

ProtonMail may prove too hard to
make work inside of Emacs.  If
anyone knows how I'd like to know.

  https://gandi.net

I found gandi.net when I looked up
who Debian registered their name
with, a long time ago.

For $10 per year (thereabouts) you
can buy a vanity domain with 5
mailboxes. Then it is possible to
make that work inside Gnus.

Has anyone had success in using a
.authinfo.gpg for Gnus?

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
"What's so strange when you know that you're a Wizard at 3?" -Joni Mitchell

Re: Alternative mail providers

[Amin Bandali]

On 2019-02-20  9:21 PM, Van L wrote:

[...]

> ProtonMail may prove too hard to
> make work inside of Emacs.  If
> anyone knows how I'd like to know.
>

Yes, in that case I’d recommend against ProtonMail.  I haven’t used it
personally (only briefly tried it when it first came out) but it appears
that they don’t support IMAP and SMTP out of the box.  They do seem to
have a “bridge” that you’d install on your system that provides a local
IMAP/SMTP interface for use with your email clients and then sends your
emails to the server.  Two major downsides of it are that firstly it’s
proprietary, and secondly you need a paid account to use the bridge.

There does seem to be a free software implementation called hydroxide[1]
which was presumably created by reverse engineering the ProtonMail web
app and APIs; might be worth a shot.  Otherwise, I’d recommend Disroot
or one of the other community-based alternatives I mentioned before.

[1]: https://github.com/emersion/hydroxide

>
>   https://gandi.net
>
> I found gandi.net when I looked up
> who Debian registered their name
> with, a long time ago.
>
> For $10 per year (thereabouts) you
> can buy a vanity domain with 5
> mailboxes. Then it is possible to
> make that work inside Gnus.
>

Gandi is a nice domain registrar, but I haven’t tried their mail
offerings.  But I do know at least on one other list on lists.gnu.org
folks were having trouble with bounces etc due to one person’s use of
Gandi mail.  IIRC they raised the issue with Gandi but I can’t remember
if it were fixed or not.

>
> Has anyone had success in using a
> .authinfo.gpg for Gnus?
>

I didn’t have any trouble setting it up to use with the nnimap backend.
Does a line like this not work in your ~/.authinfo.gpg?

machine accnamehere login email@here password passwordhere

Though there does seem to be a bug such that long username+password
combinations cause the password to be truncated when calling the IMAP
server.  I reported it a few days ago[2] but didn’t get any replies yet,
and I haven’t had time to look into it myself.

[2]: https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnu-emacs/2019-02/msg00424.html

[OFF-TOPIC] Re: Alternative mail providers

[Van L]

Amin Bandali writes:

>>
>> Has anyone had success in using a
>> .authinfo.gpg for Gnus?
>>
>
> I didn’t have any trouble setting it up to use with the nnimap backend.
> Does a line like this not work in your ~/.authinfo.gpg?
>
> machine accnamehere login email@here password passwordhere
>
> Though there does seem to be a bug such that long username+password
> combinations cause the password to be truncated when calling the IMAP

That could be the problem for me. 

Gnus prompts for the gpg
passphrase but then does not use
the line within .authinfo.gpg . It
asks for the name and password
again and writes to .authinfo file 
despite the nnimap configuration [1]
having .authinfo.gpg as the file
to use.

[1] The nnimap configuration follows:

;; quote
(add-to-list 'gnus-secondary-select-methods
	     '(nnimap "XXX"
		      (nnimap-address "XXX")
		      (nnimap-server-port XXX)
		      (nnimap-stream ssl)
		      (nnimap-authinfo-file "~/.authinfo.gpg")))
;; quote ends

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
"What's so strange when you know that you're a Wizard at 3?" -Joni Mitchell

Re: [OFF-TOPIC] Re: Alternative mail providers

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Van L <van@scratch.space> writes:

> Amin Bandali writes:
>
>>>
>>> Has anyone had success in using a
>>> .authinfo.gpg for Gnus?
>>>
>>
>> I didn’t have any trouble setting it up to use with the nnimap backend.
>> Does a line like this not work in your ~/.authinfo.gpg?
>>
>> machine accnamehere login email@here password passwordhere
>>
>> Though there does seem to be a bug such that long username+password
>> combinations cause the password to be truncated when calling the IMAP
>
> That could be the problem for me. 
>
> Gnus prompts for the gpg
> passphrase but then does not use
> the line within .authinfo.gpg . It
> asks for the name and password
> again and writes to .authinfo file 
> despite the nnimap configuration [1]
> having .authinfo.gpg as the file
> to use.

I think forced this by setting `auth-sources' unconditionally to
'("~/.authinfo.gpg"). That way it had no choice but to use the encrypted
version.

Re: [OFF-TOPIC] Re: Alternative mail providers

[Van L]

Eric Abrahamsen writes:

>
> I think forced this by setting `auth-sources' unconditionally to
> '("~/.authinfo.gpg"). That way it had no choice but to use the encrypted
> version.
>

Thanks Eric.

It turns out I didn't have a password length issue afterall. I commented
out the nnimap-authinfo-file attribute and forced all settings to use:

  (setq auth-sources "~/.authinfo.gpg")

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
"What's so strange when you know that you're a Wizard at 3?" -Joni Mitchell

gnus and gpg

[Van L]

>   (setq auth-sources "~/.authinfo.gpg")               ;; in ~/.gnus.el

Actually, that didn't work. Gnus
eventually got stuck and a new session of
Emacs-27 was unable to use the above
settings.

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
"What's so strange when you know that you're a Wizard at 3?" -Joni Mitchell

Re: gnus and gpg

[Robert Pluim]

Van L <van@scratch.space> writes:

>>   (setq auth-sources "~/.authinfo.gpg")               ;; in ~/.gnus.el
>
> Actually, that didn't work. Gnus
> eventually got stuck and a new session of
> Emacs-27 was unable to use the above
> settings.

    auth-sources is a variable defined in `auth-source.el'.
    Its value is ("~/.authinfo.gpg")
    Original value was 
    ("~/.authinfo" "~/.authinfo.gpg" "~/.netrc")

    Documentation:
    List of authentication sources.
    ^^^^

Robert

Re: gnus and gpg

[Van L]

Robert Pluim writes:

>     auth-sources is a variable defined in `auth-source.el'.

Thank you.

The first thing I should have done was, C-h v auth-sources .

The link to the customize variable interface puts in the .emacs file

 '(auth-sources (quote ("~/.authinfo.gpg")))
 
Earlier, I needed to put in

 (setq auth-sources (quote ("~/.authinfo.gpg")))

It works now but the Gnus UI is unforgiving should the passphrase be
mistyped it doesn't ask you to re-type it again.

-- 
© 2019 Van L
gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183  251E 9830 384E 9683 B835
"What's so strange when you know that you're a Wizard at 3?" -Joni Mitchell

Re: gnus and gpg

[Colin Baxter]

>>>>> Van L <van@scratch.space> writes:

    > Robert Pluim writes:
    >> auth-sources is a variable defined in `auth-source.el'.

    > Thank you.

    > The first thing I should have done was, C-h v auth-sources .

    > The link to the customize variable interface puts in the .emacs
    > file

    >  '(auth-sources (quote ("~/.authinfo.gpg")))
 
    > Earlier, I needed to put in

    >  (setq auth-sources (quote ("~/.authinfo.gpg")))

    > It works now but the Gnus UI is unforgiving should the passphrase
    > be mistyped it doesn't ask you to re-type it again.

    > -- © 2019 Van L gpg using EEF2 37E9 3840 0D5D 9183 251E 9830 384E
    > 9683 B835 "What's so strange when you know that you're a Wizard at
    > 3?" -Joni Mitchell

I have .authinfo.gpg in a non-standard location, with

(setq auth-sources '((:source "~/path/to/.authinfo.gpg")))

It works for me.

Best wishes,

-- 
Colin Baxter
m43cap@yandex.com

Re: Alternative mail providers

[mickbert]

On 20.02.2019 11:21, Van L wrote:
> 
> ProtonMail may prove too hard to
> make work inside of Emacs.  If
> anyone knows how I'd like to know.
> 
ProtonMail claim to be open-source, but it is in fact
less accessible than others: you can access it
only through a browser or a mobile app based on
google-services.

posteo.de is a cheap provider very privacy-oriented,
open and transparent. For that reason I preferred it
to many other free (in term of price) services.

--
Mick

Re: Alternative mail providers

[황병희]

Thanks, and...

On Tue, Feb 19 2019, Amin Bandali wrote:
> Thanking Eli, Bob, and everyone else volunteering their time to ensure a
> smooth experience for users of lists.gnu.org, it may not be a bad time
> to encourage people to move off of the few giant providers (which among
> other things, continuously make things more difficult for everyone else)
> and to try and run their own mail server for themselves and their family
> and friends, or consider using smaller and less-hostile alternatives.
>
> Examples of =E2=80=9Csmall=E2=80=9D community-based projects include disroo=
> t.org,
> weho.st, and teknik.io.  Other providers worth looking into may be
> Tutanota, ProtonMail, or FastMail.  Ultimately, though, I=E2=80=99d recomme=
> nd
> running your own if you can.  Container-based solutions like Mailu [1]
> or mailcow [2] with sane defaults could be very decent starting points.
>
> [1]: https://mailu.io
> [2]: https://mailcow.email
>
> There are relevant threads on the Trisquel forum every now and then:
> https://trisquel.info/en/forum/email-provider-riseupnet-or-disrootorg

+ yandex:

few minutes ago i did test with yandex. they supports custom (sub)domain for
email service as like google apps. it works for now + free cost! both
imap(ssl:993) and smtp(starttls:587) works well with ^Gnus_^))//

Sincerely, Byung-Hee.

-- 
^고맙습니다 _地平天成_ 감사합니다_^))//

Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Ian Kelling]

Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> writes:

> A PSA (Public Service Annoucement) for help-gnu-emacs.
>
> We have had several subscribers ask about a recent problem with
> Google's Gmail rejecting the mailing list.  Indeed about 30 Gmail
> subscribers were bounced off the mailing list due to Google rejecting
> mail from help-gnu-emacs.  Other addresses were okay.

One issue, I'm not sure if its the only one, is that due to a bug in our
version of mailman, we are breaking dkim signatures in replies and that
causes bounces when those replies are from from domains with a strct
dmarc policy. I'm working on upgrading mailman on lists.gnu.org in order
to fix this. Then I will investigate further and see if there is
anything else that needs to be done and continue to upgrade and improve
our email systems.

Thank you to everyone who has had the patience to deal with this. I hope
to have it fixed soon. I can't say exactly when as the FSF tech team
tends to get randomized by urgent issues that come up and I'm not sure
how much work its going to be. Are people here interested in me posting
a progress update next week?

If any of you are especially experienced with exim or mailman and
interested in helping, perhaps by answering a question on irc if I run
into trouble, email me.

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org