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  • From: Matthew Caron <address@concealed>
  • To: address@concealed
  • Subject: Re: [sympa-users] Why the "from field" is always the list name?
  • Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 11:39:23 -0400

Digitally signing the email works better. :-)

Not that anyone uses PGP/GPG/etc.. "Too much work".

On 05/26/2016 10:44 AM, David Verdin wrote:
> Indeed.
>
> However, it works very well against phishings.
>
>
> Le 26/05/2016 à 16:24, Matthew Caron (via sympa-users Mailing List) a
> écrit :
>> Thanks!
>>
>> I should also mention that it doesn't actually work. The spam
>> suppression, I mean. Spammers just set up their own mailservers with
>> their own DNS records and send "legit" email. So, there was a whole
>> bunch of work which amounted to naught, and the real "solution" is
>> heuristic matching (SpamAssassin, what used to be Postini but is now
>> owned by Google, etc.)
>>
>> On 05/26/2016 10:09 AM, David Verdin wrote:
>>> I loved the way you explained it!
>>>
>>> Actually, I will probably steal it from you the next time I have to
>>> speak about it. :-D
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> David
>>> Le 26/05/2016 à 15:48, Matthew Caron (via sympa-users Mailing List) a
>>> écrit :
>>>> Short answer: Because it has to, else things will bounce.
>>>>
>>>> Long (and very biased) answer: A long time ago, in times immemorial,
>>>> anyone could send email through any mailserver as anyone. But, then the
>>>> spammers came, abusing these open relays, and folks closed them down,
>>>> requiring authenticated connections and restricting from whom they would
>>>> relay mail. But, this was not enough, and the spam continued, and some
>>>> people who were too clever for their own good sought to restrict what
>>>> mail their servers would accept by only accepting mail from
>>>> preauthorized (via DNS) servers for that domain[1]. This effectively
>>>> prevented spoofing of the from: address to come from a different domain
>>>> than the one for which the server is one of the MXs, because if the mail
>>>> came from address@concealed and wasn't sent from a mailserver listed in the
>>>> SPF DNS record by foo.com, then the receiving MX would refuse receipt.
>>>> And lo, there was the wailing and gnashing of teeth because mailing
>>>> lists had relied on using that very trick to relay mail from address@concealed
>>>> to all of the subs, and there were bounces from the @gmail.com and
>>>> @aol.com and the misery was great. And thus, the solution was to have
>>>> the email always come from the mailing list, and therefore the server
>>>> sending the mail was an authorized MX for that domain, and all was well.
>>>>
>>>> You can, however, tune the presentation, as is done on this list, by
>>>> going to Edit List Config -> DKIM and scrolling down to the "New From
>>>> name format" configuration. Thus, you get things like:
>>>>
>>>> From: "Simone Dal Maso" (via sympa-users Mailing List)
>>>> <address@concealed>
>>>>
>>>> Which helps us humans keep track of who said what.
>>>>
>>>> [1] See also:
>>>> SPF - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
>>>> DKIM - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail
>>>> DMARC - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMARC
>>>>
>>>> Hope this helps and was mildly amusing.
>>>>
>>>> On 05/26/2016 06:40 AM, Simone Dal Maso (via sympa-users Mailing List)
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>> I'm really happy because now I had managed postfix+sympa working great!
>>>>> Following the tutorial suggested by the debian documentation was the
>>>>> solution. Quite long, but works.
>>>>> Now... I created my first super mailing list. :-)
>>>>> I have a problem with the from field, because any email arriving to me
>>>>> has the listName as sender, and not my name.
>>>>> I suppose it was the sender_anonymous parameter, but it is empty... from
>>>>> the web interface. How can I solve this?
>>>>> Thank you!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> --
>>> A bug in Sympa? Quick! To the bug tracker!
>>> <https://sourcesup.renater.fr/tracker/?group_id=23>
>>> RENATER logo
>>>
>>> *David Verdin*
>>> Études et projets applicatifs
>>>
>>> Tél : +33 2 23 23 69 71
>>> Fax : +33 2 23 23 71 21
>>>
>>> <http;//www.renater.fr>www.renater.fr
>>> RENATER
>>> 263 Avenue du Gal Leclerc
>>> 35042 Rennes Cedex
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> A bug in Sympa? Quick! To the bug tracker!
> <https://sourcesup.renater.fr/tracker/?group_id=23>
> RENATER logo
>
> *David Verdin*
> Études et projets applicatifs
>
> Tél : +33 2 23 23 69 71
> Fax : +33 2 23 23 71 21
>
> <http;//www.renater.fr>www.renater.fr
> RENATER
> 263 Avenue du Gal Leclerc
> 35042 Rennes Cedex
>
>
>

--
Central planning is as smart as the aggregate intelligence of the
central planning committee. A market is as smart as the aggregate
intelligence of the participants in that market.
==
PGP Key: http://www.mattcaron.net/pgp_key.txt
~~ Matt Caron ~~




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