Re: Bouncing replies

I'm open to suggestions. I've been a member of this list for several
years, but every time I post here, some scumbag harvests my eMail
address from it and I get hundreds of spam (most gets filtered by
postfix). I've gone through a half-dozen eMail addresses on this list
alone, and it's been a significant discouragement to posting questions,
let alone answering other people. I finally came up with the solution
below: If mail to my list address doesn't come from one of your list
servers (and those seems to change much more often than any other list I
belong to), it gets rejected. And boy, does that catch a lot of spam!

I'm curious as to why the list server defaults to using a sender's
address as the "Reply-to" address, rather than using the list address.
That means that, unless the user is careful to "reply all" (or even
better, just reply to the list address), any discussion immediately goes
private.

In fact, I don't understand why the sender's eMail address is visible at
all. Yahoo! is one of the stupidest Internet companies on the face of
the planet, and they seem to have been able to figure it out, as has
most of the free message board software. And yes, I've read
http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html -- a very long web page
that repeats the same fallacious arguments over and over. They had some
validity before spam became a problem, but not now.

Anyway, this list is not the place for that discussion. I appreciate
the support you give to not only me, but the entire mailing list. I've
white-listed you, and I'm open to other suggestions.

Sincerely, Dean

On 2008-02-10 19:11, Tom Lane wrote:
> BTW, bouncing mail sent to your advertised reply address is a good way to discourage people from ever answering you again.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> [postgresql.ultimeth.com]
> (reason: 550 <sss.pgh.pa.us[66.207.139.130]>: Client host rejected: Mail to a list member must be sent via the list)
>