Dear LSTOWN-L readers,
Yesterday, a strange posting was distributed to all > 500 active Biomch-L
subscribers. As apparent from the exchanges quoted after it, a very peculiar
s/w bug in a commercial email router is claimed to be responsible.
Suppose that a love letter cannot be delivered because of an incorrect
address and that it is, therefore, returned to "Sender" while it should,
instead, have been returned to "From:". However, there is no "Sender"
in private (e)mail, so our apprentice postman brightly concludes that
he should use the last "Sender" address as previously seen on some other
letter ...
I am posting this note so that fellow list-owners are forewarned about this
email quirk. After preparing this note, some further communications were
received which, however, do not seem to distract from the main message.
Herman J. Woltring
Moderator, [log in to unmask] / [log in to unmask]
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Received: Mon, 17 Aug 92 18:32 MET
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 10:02:53 -0600
From: Undetermined origin c/o Postmaster <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Returned Mail
Sender: Biomechanics & Movement Science listserver <[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-to: Undetermined origin c/o Postmaster <[log in to unmask]>
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
X-Envelope-to: WOLTRING, SCHOMAKER, MULDER, LIESHOUT, HLT
Comments: <Parser> E: Mail origin cannot be determined.
Comments: <Parser> E: Original tag was -> SENDER: <>
Recipient [log in to unmask] is not a valid QuickMail user.
Try a different address.
===== Original Message Follows =====
Received: from BAYLOR.EDU by BAYLOR.EDU (PMDF #12565) id
<[log in to unmask]>; Mon, 17 Aug 1992 10:01 CDT
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 10:01 CDT
From: Michael Califf <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: misaddressed message. please notify sendero of correct email address.
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
X-VMS-To: IN%"[log in to unmask]"
X-VMS-Cc: IN%"[log in to unmask]"
From: IN%"[log in to unmask]" "PMDF Mail Server" 17-AUG-1992 09:41:28.41
To: IN%"[log in to unmask]", IN%"[log in to unmask]"
CC:
Subj: Undeliverable mail: local delivery failure
Return-path: <[log in to unmask]>
Received: from BAYLOR.EDU by BAYLOR.EDU (PMDF #12565) id
<[log in to unmask]>; Mon, 17 Aug 1992 09:41 CDT
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 09:41 CDT
From: PMDF Mail Server <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Undeliverable mail: local delivery failure
To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
The message could not be delivered to:
Addressee: gaitros
Reason:
%MAIL-E-NOSUCHUSR, no such user GAITROS at node BUVAX1
----------------------------------------
Received: from vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (MAILER@VTVM1) by BAYLOR.EDU (PMDF #12565) id
<[log in to unmask]>; Mon, 17 Aug 1992 09:40 CDT
Received: from VTVM1 (EATON) by vtvm1.cc.vt.edu (Mailer R2.08 R208002) with
BSMTP id 9695; Mon, 17 Aug 92 10:39:53 EDT
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 92 10:38:51 EDT
From: John <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Are you back home yet? I cannot make Don's address work. Please tell
him to check it out.
To: Vicki <[log in to unmask]>
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
Are you home yet. I cannot make Don's address work. Please have him check it
out.
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Since none of the named email addresses belonged to a Biomch-L subscriber,
I sent a query to the apparent source of this note, Mr Michael Califf who
appeared to be [log in to unmask] His reply follows.
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Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 16:38 CDT
From: Michael Califf <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Networking incident
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
I apologize for the problem. I was manually forwarding an incorrectly
addressed email note and had not checked the address before sending the
message (Vicki instead of Vicky). The gateway our QuickMail administrator
has currently installed is fatally broken when it comes to addressing for
bounced messages. If it does not find a header field it wishes to use
for replying in the current message, it uses the one from the last message
which _did_ have the field. This has resulted in a rash of bounced messages
to mailing lists (which typically have all of the message header fields
filled in) which should have gone to individuals. Since this is a "feature"
of the latest release of this gateway (Dispatcher/SMTP for QuickMail, a
product of Intercon Inc. and one of the cheaper gateways of this kind on
the market) I have been seeing a lot of these messages, from our site and
from others.
All that I can do beyond what I have done already (explained the problem
to our QuickMail administrator and asked him to call it in as a bug)
is to refuse to forward email to any of the affected email addresses.
(Which I will do now. This is getting to be a real hassle.)
Once again, I apologize for this inconvenience,
Mike Califf
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]
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In view of Mike's "rash of bounced messages to mailing lists", I thought that
it might be useful to post this event onto LSTOWN-L, but only after obtaining
the defaulted vendor's opinion. Here is the ensuing exchange; clearly, Inter-
Con has some very alert employees.
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Date: 18-AUG-1992 01:18:00.53 MET
From: KUNPV1::WOLTRING "H.J. Woltring, fax/tel +31.40.413 744"
To: IN%"[log in to unmask]", IN%"[log in to unmask]"
CC: WOLTRING
Subj: SPR on your QuickMail product
TO: Gaige Paulsen / Kurt Baumann
Intercon Systems Corporation, HERNDON, Va/USA
Having retrieved your names and email addresses from the WHOIS database
at nic.ddn.mil, this is to ask InterCon's attention for the following.
Yesterday, a strange posting was distributed from baylor.edu to the > 500
active subscribers of [log in to unmask] After contacting the
apparent source of the message, the below reply was received.
May I urge InterCon Systems Corporation to look into this matter in order
to avoid continued embarassment? I propose to post a summary of this
problem onto [log in to unmask] so that other listowners (at least
those of the > 3000 BITNET lists currently in existence) may be forewarned.
Before doing so, I'd appreciate InterCon's comments, though.
Thank you for your attention. Sincerely,
Herman J. Woltring PhD <[log in to unmask]>
Moderator, [log in to unmask] (Biomechanics & Movement Sciences)
(quoted material omitted: see above -- hjw)
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Received: Tue, 18 Aug 92 16:33 MET
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 10:42:36 -0500
From: Kurt D Baumann <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: SPR on your QuickMail product
To: "H.J. Woltring, fax/tel +31.40.413 744" <[log in to unmask]>
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
X-Mailer: InterCon TCP/Connect II 1.1d15
X-Envelope-to: WOLTRING
> Since this is a "feature" of the latest release of this gateway
> (Dispatcher/SMTP for QuickMail, a product of Intercon Inc. and one
> of the cheaper gateways of this kind on the market) I have been
> seeing a lot of these messages, from our site and from others.
An interesting error. One which I hope has been sent to our tech support. I
will check into that. We are getting ready to release another version of the
gateway soon, and this problem will be addressed there. Hardly what I would
call a feature. :-)
Thanks for the info, I do hope the person who had this problem also forwarded
the information of the problem onto us here. As I said I will check into
this problem and make sure that it is reported so that it will get fixed.
Thanks!
Kurt Baumann
PS You might want to include the fact that we are "now" aware of the problem
and working on getting it fixed ASAP. Thanks!
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Following this, I double-checked with Bill Califf in order to finalise this
posting:
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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 16:52 MET
From: "H.J. Woltring, fax/tel +31.40.413 744" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Networking incident
To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
Dear Mr Califf,
I took the liberty of forwarding yesterday's correspondence to mr Baumann at
InterCon, with a remark that I intend to summarize your note to LSTOWN-L, but
only after receiving his comments. These have now been provided, and the
moderator of LSTOWN-L has already indicated to be very interested in such a
posting.
-----------------------------------
Received: Tue, 18 Aug 92 18:15 MET
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 11:18 CDT
From: Michael Califf <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: RE: Networking incident
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Message-id: <[log in to unmask]>
Herman -
I've added in some CC'd addresses (at InterCon) to this message at the
request of Bill Raines.
I have no problems with you posting my message as is, but I should have
added the standard disclaimer "This message is the personal opinion of
Mike Califf and is not representative of any policy or opinion of Baylor
University". If you could add that to the bottom I would be grateful.
(I'd also like a copy of the final message.)
That said, I did some testing this morning. If a message is sent to
our Dispatcher/SMTP gateway with 1) an invalid address and 2) _no_
"Sender: " field, the message is "returned" to the "Sender:" address
from the last message which had one. The returned message goes out
with an _empty_ "Sender:" field. i.e.
Sender: <>
which ListServers seem to have to dance around as well.
The version of Dispatcher/SMTP we have is release 2.0, which apparently
had an extremely short release-life and is now on hold pending bug-fixes.
Mike Califf
[log in to unmask]
Disclaimer: This message is the personal opinion of Mike Califf and is
not representative of any policy or opinion of Baylor University.
(remembered this time :-)
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Afterthought (hjw):
I'm alway baffled by the creativity in which Cyberspace authors
(of UseNet postings in particular) indemnify employers or other
legal entities from their constitutional freedom of speech ...
Surely, email address symbolism does not imply that the person
to the left of the @ symbol speaks on behalf of the entity named
to the right of it? I would think that a natural author is always
personally responsible for anything that (s)he puts his/her name to
unless the opposite is claimed / proven. Anyhow, this is a side
remark to the main issue of this posting.
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