Thu, 9 Mar 2006 09:07:43
LISTSERV LISTSERV.MSN.COM has just received the enclosed
delivery error
as a result of a probe sent to your bondyahoo.com
account for the
IE-HTML list. If you are reading this message, it means
that your mail
system is successfully delivering mail to your mailbox,
while at the same
time reporting that an error has occurred (or,
alternatively, the error
could be due to a system problem which has since then been
fixed). At any
rate, LISTSERV has no way to know that you have actually
received the
present message, and is operating on the assumption that
your e-mail
address is no longer valid. Typically, LISTSERV will send
you one or more
additional probe messages, on a daily basis, to determine
whether the
failure persists, and if so you will be removed from the
list eventually.
Some lists are configured to remove users on the first
failure.
Assuming you have not been removed from the list yet, you
can stop this
process by sending the following command to LISTSERVLISTSERV.MSN.COM as
soon as possible:
CONFIRM IE-HTML
This will tell LISTSERV that your account actually does work
and that you
still want to receive mail from the IE-HTML list.
While the CONFIRM command will solve your immediate problem,
it is only a
matter of time until you find yourself in the same
situation again.
Please take a look at the enclosed error report and try
to determine
whether it is a genuine error, or just an informational
message. Bear in
mind that this error report was processed by a computer
that cannot tell
"User JAIME24 does not exist" from
"Please note that the Department of
Microbiology will be closed from December 19 to January
2" or "Attempts
to deliver your message have been unsuccessful for 300
seconds; will keep
trying for another 431700 seconds". These
informational messages, while
possibly useful to a human reader, should not be sent in
answer to a
message coming from a mailing list (it is very easy for the
mail program
to determine whether a message is coming from a mailing
list). Genuine
errors should be reported to your computer/network support
staff as soon
as possible so that they can be corrected.
------------------------- Delivery error report
-------------------------
Return-Path: <>
Received: from 209.119.0.3 by ALMOND.EASE.LSOFT.COM (SMTPL
release 1.0m) with TCP; Thu, 9 Mar 2006 09:07:43 -0500
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 9:06:25 -0500
Reply-to: postmasterLIME.ease.lsoft.com
From: "LSMTP for Digital Unix v1.1b"
<postmasterLIME.ease.lsoft.com>
Subject: Undelivered mail
To: owner-IE-HTML*bond**MCSE*-MSLISTSERV.MSN.COM
X-Report-Type: Nondelivery; boundary="> Error
description:"
An error was detected while processing the enclosed message.
A list of
the affected recipient follows. This list is in a special
format that
allows software like LISTSERV to automatically take action
on incorrect
addresses; you can safely ignore the numeric codes.
--> Error description:
Error-for: bondyahoo.com
Error-Code: 0
Error-Text: Mailer mail.yahoo.com said:
"554 <bondyahoo.com>: Relay access
denied"
Error-End: One error reported.
------------------------------ Original message
------------------------------
Received: from almond (209.119.0.160) by LIME.ease.lsoft.com
(LSMTP for Digital Unix v1.1b) with SMTP id
<10.000988F9LIME.ease.lsoft.com>; Thu, 9 Mar 2006
5:58:47 -0500
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 06:00:02 -0500
From: "Microsoft LISTSERV Server (14.4)"
<LISTSERVLISTSERV.MSN.COM>
Subject: Subscription probe for IE-HTML - please ignore
To: David bond <bondyahoo.com>
Message-ID: <LISTSERV%200603090600021190.FDA8LISTSERV.MSN.COM>
X-LSV-ListID: IE-HTML
List-Help: <http://microsoft.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-ms
n.exe?LIST=IE-HTML>,
<mailto:LISTSERVLISTSERV.MSN.COM?body=INFO+IE-HTML>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:IE-HTML-unsubscribe-requestLISTSERV.MSN.COM>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:IE-HTML-subscribe-requestLISTSERV.MSN.COM>
List-Owner: <mailto:IE-HTML-requestLISTSERV.MSN.COM>
List-Archive: <http://microsoft.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-ms
n.exe?LIST=IE-HTML>
Thu, 9 Mar 2006 06:00:02
This message is a "probe" for your subscription
to the IE-HTML list. You
do not need to take any action to remain subscribed to the
list, and in
particular you should not reply to this message. Simply
discard it now,
or read on if you would like to know more about how
this probing
mechanism works.
A "probe" is a message like the one you
are reading, sent to an
individual subscriber and tagged with a special signature
to uniquely
identify this particular subscriber (you can probably
not see the
signature because it is in the mail headers). If the
subscriber's e-mail
address is no longer valid, the message will be returned to
LISTSERV and
the faulty address will be removed from the list. If the
subscriber's
address is still valid, the message will not bounce and the
user will not
be deleted.
The main advantage of this technique is that it can be
fully automated;
the list owner does not need to read a single delivery
error. For a large
or active list, the manpower savings can be tremendous.
In fact, some
lists are so large that it is virtually impossible to
process delivery
errors manually. Another advantage is that the special,
unique signatures
make it possible to accurately process delivery errors that
are otherwise
unintelligible, even to an experienced technical person.
The drawback, however, is that this method lacks
flexibility and
forgiveness. Since the Internet does not provide a reliable
mechanism for
probing an e-mail address without actually delivering a
message to the
human recipient, the subscribers need to be
inconvenienced with yet
another "junk message". And, unlike a human
list owner, LISTSERV follows
a number of simple rules in determining when and whether
to terminate a
subscription; it doesn't remember that you wrote last week
to warn that
there might be problems with your ISP over the weekend. In
particular, a
common problem with automatic probes is mail gateways
that return a
delivery error, but do deliver the message anyway. LISTSERV
has no way to
know that the message was in fact delivered, and in
most cases the
subscriber is not aware of the existence of these
"false" error reports.
If this happens to you, LISTSERV will send you another
message with a
copy of the delivery error returned by your mail system, so
that you can
show it to your technical people.
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