On 17 May 2006 at 9:04, David Phillips wrote:

> We've been getting a bunch of messages from listserv with the subject
> "Problem processing mail from from bogusaddress"
> 
> The body reads "An error occurred while processing file 171804 from
> [log in to unmask]: "Mail has been  received in the  LISTSERV mailbox
> from a  user that had  been served out".
> 
> That's followed by a forwarded message.  What is very puzzling to me
> is that the to field in the forwarded message is
> [log in to unmask]

What you see on the To: field is not necessarily the only recipient 
of the message. It's sort of like sticking a letter addressed to 
George Bush into an envelope addressed to Bill Clinton. Where the 
message gets delivered is the address on the envelope, not the 
address on the letter inside the envelope.  

It's why you are able to receive email messages where the To: is 
[log in to unmask] rather than your own email address. 
Your email address is on the envelope, but not in the enclosure.

> 
> Two questions come up.
> 1.  Why is OUR listserv getting this email and sending it onto our list owners?

That address is probably being used to spam a lot of addresses, 
including your listserv@domain address, hence it got served off due 
to too many invalid commands. The copy of the email that was 
addressed (on the envelope) to your list was intercepted because it 
was served off and LISTSERV wants the list owner to know about it in 
case there is something to be done about it.

Normal subscribers can get served off if they send too many bad 
commands to the LISTSERV command address, for example by sending a 
message to listserv@domain instead of [log in to unmask] In that case, 
this message to the list owner is helpful because then the list owner 
can serve the subscriber back on and let them know what happened.

Most of the served off notices I get these days are from spammers who 
try to send to one of my lists after they've been served off. 

> 2.  Can we stop it? 

I recommend you serve off the address even more and send the command:

SERVE [log in to unmask] OFF DROP

That tells LISTSERV: don't process any mail from this address and 
don't even tell me about it.

-- 
Francoise Becker <[log in to unmask]>

Knowledge is just a click away: http://www.lsoft.com/optin.html