Midphase Hosting

[Matthew Seaman]

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On 10/06/2010 17:12:50, Jerry wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:12:48 +0200
> Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown at ru.ac.za> articulated:
> 
>> On Thursday 10 June 2010 15:04:53 Matthew Seaman wrote:
>>>
>>> The only other mechanism might be to tag each list e-mail with a
>>> unique value for each recipient in such a way that it is preserved
>>> in the message that mpcustomer.com's help system sends out.  That
>>> has severe problems of scale and load on the FreeBSD mail servers,
>>> but it might be possible.  There is a similar technique (whose name
>>> I have temporarily forgotten) that some mailing lists use where
>>> they tag the envelope sender address with the recipient name in
>>> order to identify addresses that are bouncing back the list e-mail.
>>
>> Isn't that called VERP (variable envelope return path)? I agree - the
>> load it would impose isn't worth it. I'm just shocked that midphase
>> care so little about their reputation or the impression this is
>> giving, on one of the more widely-archived mailing lists, of their
>> competence and diligence.
> 
> I have employed VERP with mailing lists that I controlled. I never
> noticed any adverse effects. I know of several technical lists
> like Dovecot that employ it. Obviously, they find it useful.

VERP itself is reasonably lightweight, as it modifies the envelope
sender address -- something that can be applied during processing by the
MTA as part of sending the message.

Unfortunately, I suspect that to get the message through to
mpcustomer.com and then have it spammed back to the sender *with the tag
intact*, VERP per se won't do the trick.  It will probably be necessary
to put the tag into the body of the message.  As far as mail delivery
goes, that's a very different story -- it goes from one message with
tens of thousands of recipients, to tens of thousands of messages each
with one recipient.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

- -- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
JID: matthew at infracaninophile.co.uk               Kent, CT11 9PW
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