Hi, > Anyway, if you want to be tracking bounces, you really should look into > VERP. James doesn't have an out-of-the-box ability to do this for you, > but you can write a mailet to track VERP bounces.
Which is something I have been looking into, but I am dreading the thought of having to parse all of the different flavors of bounce messages that exist. Using VERP you can easily identify who you sent the original message to which bounced, but it does not tell you why it bounced and it does not tell you if the bounce is temporary, permanent, auto-reply, etc.... I have been looking around to see if someone has already done the bounce parser. So far I have not had much luck. This http://www.boogietools.com/products/productBoogieBounce.asp could have been nice but its a win32 dll and costs :-( Sergei ----- Original Message ----- From: "Serge Knystautas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "James Users List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 2:43 PM Subject: Re: Reply-To and out-of-office messages > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > > > I'm running an application that sends out email notifications to customers. > > It is supposed to be a one-way communication channel but there are lways > > inevitable bounces and replies from users. We also get our fair share of > > out-of-office messages. Our emails are constructed in such a way that the > > Reply-To: and From: headers contain distinct email-addresses in our domain. > > This enables us to determine which email we have sent has caused the reply > > or bounce. > > > > I've seen a number of out-of-office messages that have been sent to the > > address that was set in the From: header. Is this the way an automated reply > > is supposed to be handled? Reading RFC2822 does not really clarify this: > > > > "When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) to > > which the author of the message suggests that replies be sent. In the > > absence of the "Reply-To:" field, replies SHOULD by default be sent to the > > mailbox(es) specified in the "From:" field unless otherwise specified by the > > person composing the reply." > > > > I would interpret this as: "use the Reply-To: to reply to if present, > > otherwise use the From:". > > > > Is my interpretation incorrect? > > Well, if you are doing the responses from within the mail server, it is > preferable to do neither... ideally vacation messages should go to the > address specified in the "MAIL FROM" commend during the SMTP session. > If you are just doing it on the client, it is less correct but safer to > use the From header. Here's why... > > The message you sent to this list, the From is your address, the > Reply-To is the mailing list, and the MAIL-FROM address was a special > one-time address that the mailing list used to track bounces for this > message. > > If you use the Reply-To address, then you're going to send a message > back to the mailing list, which will generate another vacation notice, > etc... So Reply-To would make more sense but isn't very good for > vacation notices. (some listservs do not set the reply-to to be the > mailing list, so then you have the same behavior as From below...) > > If you use the From address, you as the author would get the vacation > notice. You'll sometimes see this when you post to listservs. This > isn't great (because the author doesn't care), but at least doesn't risk > creating an infinite loop. > > If you use the one-time address from MAIL FROM, then the mailing list > software will see that it was unable to deliver this message. This will > likely just be seen as a temporary state, and it can determine whether > to stop sending you messages for a while (probably send you a notice in > the meantime letting you know what's going on). > > Anyway, if you want to be tracking bounces, you really should look into > VERP. James doesn't have an out-of-the-box ability to do this for you, > but you can write a mailet to track VERP bounces. > (http://cr.yp.to/proto/verp.txt) > > -- > Serge Knystautas > Loki Technologies > http://www.lokitech.com > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
