moderated Messages to +owner being wrongly routed to the whole group
Chris Jones
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 08:17 AM, Dave Sergeant wrote:
It all comes down to the decision by Mark to use + as the onlySorry; I think that is unfair. If + is supposed to be acceptable character under the terms of RFC 2821 then using it was a perfectly reasonable decision. The fact that a particular combination of (apparently any) email client, mail provider (BT) and "traffic handler" corrupts addresses with + in them does not negate Mark's original decision. I have in the non - recent past sent messages to a +owner address without mishap, but clearly I have no idea about what might be responsible for the change in behaviour. I still have some hope that Peter Martinez' enquiry via "BT Community" might bear fruit, although a little of that hope is starting to fade. If other mail service providers allow + addresses to work uncorrupted, then so should BT (etc) under all circumstances. Having said that I agree that most subscribers are "use by email client" and expecting them to use their mail provider's web UI is probably unrealistic. Mark; are you in any position whereby you could chase the errant provider(s) from your perspective? Chris
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Dave,
Um, the idea of btinternet users only posting via the web interface isThey can post messages to the group using whichever interface they like. It is only email commands (including messages to +owner) that are afflicted by synchronoss' error. I have no statistics but I sense on the groups I moderate thatWhose web interface are you talking about? I'm not talking about using Groups.io's web interface, I'm saying those members need to send email commands using btinternet's webmail interface. From what I've heard, it is only fossils like myself that cling to SMTP email clients like Thunderbird and Outlook Express - that most email users now use their service's webmail interface instead. Shal
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Chris,
Sorry; I think that is unfair. If + is supposed to be acceptableMoreover, it is a decision with precedent. Gmail has been using + for aliases since long before Groups.io was started. Shal
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Dave Wade
Folks,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
The trouble is when it goes wrong, the effect can be somewhat devastating. When it happened on one of the lists I am on some very personal information about an individual that should not have been sent to the list was disclosed to the whole list.... Dave
-----Original Message-----
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Dave Wade
Mark, GMAIL also ignores “+” and almost all special symbols. (it didn’t used to), but if moderators, one of whom is on BTINTERNET try and use this to chat to each other , then the results are disastrous. As for the web interface, well many people have a mobile phone as well which uses IMAP/SMPTP so perhaps not as rare as you think Dave
From: main@beta.groups.io <main@beta.groups.io> On Behalf Of Mark Fletcher
Sent: 26 September 2019 01:07 To: main@beta.groups.io Subject: Re: [beta] Messages to +owner being wrongly routed to the whole group
Late replying to this.
I'm wary (used it right this time Shal!) of changing this, especially to a period. It's not like periods aren't interpreted differently by different mail servers. Gmail, for example, ignores all periods in email addresses. Next time you send an email to a friend with a gmail account, feel free to sprinkle some periods in the left side of their email address. Note that we do not ignore periods, even for Gmail accounts. If I had to do it over, I'd probably special case this to handle it, but it seems to only confuse people a few times a year.
Mark
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Peter Martinez <Peter.Martinez@...>
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 08:54 AM, Dave Wade wrote:
Thanks for that Dave! For the benefit of the others reading this, I believe Dave is referring to a group in which both Dave and I (and Chris) are members, and the individual in question was ME! regards
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Chris Jones
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 08:54 AM, Dave Wade wrote:
When it happened on one of the lists I am on some very personal information about an individual that should not have been sent to the list was disclosed to the whole list....IMHO this is a very strong lever to try to get the service provider(s) to get their act in order; an address that was acceptably formatted was corrupted with the result that personal information sent in confidence was revealed to a large number of people. If a service provider is allowed to get away with one corruption then there is no means of obtaining restitution if they suddenly come up with another one. Chris
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Dave Wade
Chris, The problem is that the affected person may not be a user of the service that’s messed up. I would however say that there may be a case for filing a GDPR failure against them Dave
From: main@beta.groups.io <main@beta.groups.io> On Behalf Of Chris Jones via Groups.Io
Sent: 26 September 2019 09:12 To: main@beta.groups.io Subject: Re: [beta] Messages to +owner being wrongly routed to the whole group
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 08:54 AM, Dave Wade wrote:
IMHO this is a very strong lever to try to get the service provider(s) to get their act in order; an address that was acceptably formatted was corrupted with the result that personal information sent in confidence was revealed to a large number of people.
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And also being on that group I have seen the offending message that
should have just been sent to owners. Some owner messages should never be accidentally sent to the whole list. As for gmail ignoring special characters like '.' I had an interesting one involving this. A member has been subscribed for some time as fxxxxn.wxxt@gmail.com and for some reason changed his email program to use fxxxxnwxxt@gmail.com and wondered why he couldn't post to the list with that address but could still receive OK. Gmail was ignoring the '.' but groups.io was not. Like Shal I am also a dinosaur who only uses real email on a real email client. I absolutely hate web mail. Dave On 26 Sep 2019 at 1:10, Peter Martinez via Groups.Io wrote: The trouble is when it goes wrong, the effect can be somewhatThanks for that Dave! For the benefit of the others reading this, I http://davesergeant.com
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Peter Martinez <Peter.Martinez@...>
Shal's reference to gmail using "+" in some way associated with aliases, is not consistent with the observation (by me and others) that gmail truncates leftsides at a "+" . An email to username+anytext@gmail.com is delivered to username@gmail.com and NOT rejected back to the sender as "No such user". The link Shal gave to a Gmail help page about aliases doesn't contain any reference to the "+" character..
Dave's reference to moderators "using this to chat to each other" is a reference to using the <groupname+owner@groups.io> address as a mini-group. Peter
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Peter Martinez <Peter.Martinez@...>
In my last message message, something or someone downstream of me replaced the word "gmail" after the @ symbol, by three dots,in two places, and that wrecked the meaning. Truncation of the user-part at the + sign only occurs WITHIN the gmail domain, not in ANY domain!
Peter
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Chris Jones
On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 09:23 AM, Dave Wade wrote:
I would however say that there may be a case for filing a GDPR failure against themWhich was the point I was making, albeit rather obliquely in my earlier post. An email to the ICO (Information Commissioner for non - UK readers) might just stir things up a bit. Chris.
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Peter,
Shal's reference to gmail using "+" in some way associated withThat's exactly what Gmail means by an alias: username+foo is an alias for username. But it isn't stripped - the +foo part shows in the received message and is available for use in filter definitions (which is the intended use case). The link Shal gave to a Gmail help page about aliases doesn't containYou need to open the expander titled "Filter using your Gmail alias". Shal
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Peter Martinez <Peter.Martinez@...>
Shal:
Understood now. So if no aliases are defined and I send an email to <myname+sometext@gmail.com>, it will simply strip and discard "+sometext" (which is what I have seen), whereas if I define an alias as "myname+other", it will recognise an incoming email to <myname+other@gmail.com and process it as a valid address. So I can indeed cite this when I talk to BT as a feature which the synchronoss/BT bug will break. Peter
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Peter,
So if no aliases are defined and I send an email toBoth cases are received by the same user account at gmail, whether an alias was predefined or not. The alias case simply allows the user to filter incoming messages based on the alias. So I can indeed cite this when I talk to BT as a feature which theHopefully it will help you persuade them. Shal
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