Re: Bypassing the mailing list name restriction

[Jason Molenda <jason@molenda.com>]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 06:02:16PM -0400, Chris Faylor wrote:

> To: "cygwin@sourceware.cygnus.com" <cygwin@hotpop.com>

Weird.  The whole point of the To/Cc checks are that spammers won't
customize the headers for each mail note - they just throw out
static copies of their adverts.  This person is (obviously) sending
out dynamic spam mail, but is not bothering to put the list name
in the To: header.  Unless his goal is to trick people in to replying
to the @hotpop.com addr, I don't see what the point is.  (You can
probably get this acct shut down if hotpop.com is a free e-mail
site, but there's nothing to stop him for opening another for his
next spam)

> I'd like to modify check-for-listname.sh so that the above trick no longer
> works.  Are there any objections to my doing this?

FWIW, I'd be concerned about variations that some MUAs will use.
A quick browse of my mailbox shoes that the three most common are

  {To|Cc}: "ENGLISH_NAME" <ADDR>
  {To|Cc}: ENGLISH_NAME <ADDR>
  {To|Cc}: ADDR

With more addresses possible in each case, separated by commas.
Even with these variations, you can't just make the grep look for
the "<" and ">" chars or it'll lose on the third variation.  And
I'd be surprised if these are the only styles of addresses that
are being generated by all the odd software out there...


Jason