[Elecraft] help with mailing list

Greg Troxel gdt at lexort.com
Tue Jun 14 19:27:48 EDT 2022


Robert Strickland via Elecraft <elecraft at mailman.qth.net> writes:

> When I send an email to this list, the "from" field prints my name and
> "via Elecraft" together in the from/correspondents column. What am I
> doing to get the "via Elecraft" and what do I do to get rid of it so
> that just my name appears? I am using Thunderbird as a mail client on
> a W10-64 machine. Thanks in advance.

tl;dr: The world is broken and the only thing that you can do is to move
from yahoo to a provider whose addresses you see on the list without
this munging.

A few things come together:

 - Mailinglists resend messages, normally with the From: field
   unchanged.

 - As part of spamfighting, mail senders often add digital signatures
   (DKIM) so that recipients can tell a message was sent by the domain
   in From:

 - Mailinglists add subject tags and footers.  I view this as a bug
   because it breaks signatures, and delivers a message From: someone
   with content they didn't send -- but I'm odd, it's very common and
   many think this is ok.  (People can sort/filter on List-Id: header.)

 - Some domains publish a policy that says "if the messages fails DKIM
   and it didn't come from my servers, reject it."
   yahoo/aol/verizon.net (all the same thing now) is one of those
   domains.  This is called "DMARC reject" and fairly few places do it.

 - Therefore, messages to lists from DMARC reject places experience one of:

   * if there is no subject tag, no footer, and no From: munging: DKIM
     is intact and all is ok

   * if there is modification then the redistributed message fails DKIM
     and hence DMARC

   * If there is modification and the From: line is rewritten to be from
     the list, so that the original sender's domain is not looked up for
     DMARC rules, it is delivered.  But it is broken, because "reply"
     which should send a message to the sender, sends to the list,
     risking publishing private correspondence.

 - There is Authenticated Receive Chain which might be a way out, but it
   might just be too complicated.


So solutions are:

  - move your email to a provider which does not publish a DMARC reject
    policy.  It's a good idea to move away from yahoo anyway, because
    their inbound spam filtering is broken and unfixable, in my
    experience (their customers could not get mail from me to land in
    their INBOX despite trying pretty hard, and their support could
    not/would not explain why).

  - configure mailinglists to 1) not add subject tags 2) not add footers
    and 3) not do From: rewriting.

I recommend doing both, but both are easier said than done.

(As an addendum, the list blocks messages with OpenPGP signatures.)

73 de n1dam


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