Erik_
Yes, more or less.. though it's off right now.
Tue Jul 25, 2023 12:24am

I'll probably try turning it back on in a few days. I wanted to make sure that the email headers fix I put in was working 100% before I turned back on the auto-unsubscribing. (So far, no issues)

Below are the rough steps that trigger an auto-unsubscribe. If any step fails, no action is taken, just the bounce email is forwarded to my personal account to double check.
* Hosted email address receives an 'undeliverable' email response message into the inbox.
* Inside that undeliverable email body, the list server then attempts to parse out the original recipient and status error code that caused the bounce (yay regex!)
* If either can't be found, a 'notes' field is populated saying the error as well as to take a closer look at the bounce message and see if manual action is needed.
* If the failure error code equals any of the following, an unsubscribe gets triggered:
UNDELIVERABLE_EMAIL_ABORTED => "5.0.0",
UNDELIVERABLE_EMAIL_ACCOUNT_NOT_FOUND => "5.1.1",
UNDELIVERABLE_EMAIL_DOMAIN_NOT_FOUND => "5.1.2",
UNDELIVERABLE_EMAIL_ACCOUNT_DISABLED => "5.2.1",
UNDELIVERABLE_EMAIL_SENDING_DENIED => "5.7.0",
UNDELIVERABLE_EMAIL_POSSIBLE_SPAM => "5.7.1",

In all of the cases above, the email will get forwarded to my personal inbox. What steps were, or weren't, taken are populated in a 'notes' field at the top of the forwarded email.

When the headers were messed up, the test email I sent myself that caused me to get unsubscribed returned error code 5.7.1 which I guess makes sense because the message format was all messed up.

I was sort of on the fence with implementing this plan because of how annoying false positives can be for the end user. I only ended up doing it because of how insanely strict email hosts are about spam prevention (well, most at least). It's bad enough that if a bunch of people mark your messages as spam, it can cause a total blacklisting of your email address from sending mail out to other people in the future.

That's why I make sure to have the url of the site as well as an obvious unsubscribe link in all messages sent. I also make sure that my DKIM, DMARC, and SPF are all valid and legit. So far things have been pretty good since I've moved to the hosted email (knock on wood) but I do try to stay on top of any bounces which could hurt my email domain score and screw up the daily subscription emails that go out.

My guess is that strictness is why groups.io also has their auto
unsubscribe feature. It's just not worth chancing it by continuing to send to an address that bounced your email to it.

  • If you didn't want emails, it worked great! - Puckdropper, Mon Jul 24 2023 6:38pm
    Some receiving mail servers report to the sending server that a message was marked as spam. Groups.io receives these messages and unsubscribes your e-mail address. It gets to be annoying when it's done incorrectly. (I've had to fish a few groups.io digests out of the spam bucket.) Is that basically... more
    • Yes, more or less.. though it's off right now.- Erik_, Tue Jul 25 2023 12:24am
      • I hadn't realized that things had gone so far - Puckdropper, Sat Aug 05 2023 4:06am
        I remember hearing about domain keys when it first came out. Guess that's why my e-mail doesn't see as much spam as it used to, even though my address is posted publicly on Usenet. (Or is it just Usenet's dying out? Sad to see it go.)
        • Yeah it's crazy now but also a good thing. - Erik_, Sun Aug 06 2023 4:05pm
          It makes it sort of a pain as the person sending the emails but makes the quality of life of the recipients so much better than it was back in the day. I wonder how many more layers they can plop on over the coming years or if something will finally replace email. (Thinking probably not... Sort of like... more
          • What they like about e-mail is it's insecure - Puckdropper, Mon Aug 07 2023 3:50pm
            The average person doesn't know that, but it's really just a post card. Intended for recipient only, but not private. It makes it very easy to eavesdrop on it. Secure messages are things like Whatsapp. Will IM programs ever replace e-mail? Well, they've made e-mail look a lot like IM programs....... more
            • Didn't even think of that - Erik_, Tue Aug 08 2023 8:32am
              But it makes sense. The sending and receiving parties have to read the email in order to process them. You can base64 encode the body but that's trivial to reverse. (IIRC the types of transfer encoding were 7bit, 8bit, base64, printable and binary or something) I guess that's how messages with too much... more
              • The "envelope" portion will always be world readable - Puckdropper, Mon Aug 14 2023 5:58am
                It's just how it's got to work. The body could easily be encrypted, but it needs to be seamless. PGP never really took off, unfortunately. Sometimes I think it's a useful thought exercise to pretend an email costs the same as postage stamp. Do you really need to spend that money to just tick off... more
                • I wonder how much an email does cost? - Erik_, Tue Aug 15 2023 1:05am
                  It's using server resources on every hop it makes to the final mail server. It's probably a fraction of a fraction of a cent from end to end but the sheer amount of unsolicited spam emails that get generated and sent around must cost a somewhat substantial amount of money overall. I had that issue only... more
                  • Good question... Probably what you're thinking. - Puckdropper, Fri Aug 25 2023 6:05am
                    I'm sure somewhere you can find stats on how much stuff is on the Internet backbones that no one actually wants. Spam, the Nieman-Marcus cookie recipie that's been forwarded 35 times without being cleaned up, etc. It's actually quite a bit. It could be that it's an exchange server... Yahoo! and... more
                    • Yeah, it's definitely an Exchange server - Erik_, Wed Aug 30 2023 9:54am
                      It's just been so long since I've done IT/SRE work besides just development that I wasn't sure if maybe MIcrosoft had their own spam filter that they do on top of whatever your local Exchange server has set up. I guess thinking about it now, that would probably annoy a bunch of IT workers who are wondering... more
                      • So now we know--email sending is cheap (like stealing) - Puckdropper, Wed Aug 30 2023 5:09pm
                        and the receivers waste around $.95/message (like those being stolen from) and the only real solution is filtering (like theft prevention) but that takes resources (like buying locks does) and everyone except the spammers (thieves) would be happier without it. I really didn't expect the analogy to... more
"Forces act when not restrained" - Puckdropper