[IRPCoalition] FYI, technical issues for Yahoo email account-holders

[Tapani Tarvainen]

Dear all and especially Yahoo users,

Effi's mail server (where IRP's lists reside) has been upgraded
to help with this issue and we're trying some of the new settings
now available.

This affects Yahoo users as well as people trying to reply
privately to them.

With current setting, messages coming from Yahoo accounts
are wrapped (as attachments) within a message appearing
to come from the list server.

This means that when you use normal Reply function in
your mail client, the reply, which would normally go
to the original poster only, goes to the list instead
if the original came from an Yahoo account.

If you want to send a message to the list, using
reply-to-list or reply-to-all or similar, you don't
need to worry about this.

But if you want to reply *privately* to a Yahoo user's
message, you have to look inside the message to dig
out the real address. (Some email clients can do
this more or less automatically, in some you may have to 
resort to cut'n'pasting the address.)

Note, this is still experimental and we don't know how
well it actually works. If it causes too many new problems
there're a few alternative settings we can try; please
let me know if problems persist or new ones appear.

Finally, a brief recap of the problem: Yahoo, as part of an effort
to reduce spam, now rejects all messages with something at yahoo.com
From: address coming from a non-Yahoo server (like our list
server), generating error messages which have been bouncing as
well. Moreover it instructs other mail servers to do likewise, and
many, including Microsoft and Google obey - so they have rejected
any messages from Yahoo addresses coming via the mailing list.
Messages *originating* from Google &c have not been impacted
(yet), and Yahoo users have also been able to receive messages via
the list - unless they've been coming from yahoo as well.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen

On Jul 22 14:17, IRPCoalition (info at irpcharter.org) wrote:

> Dear all
> 
> A number of you will have received a notice from the IRPC list
> mailperson that your Yahoo, and possibly gmail accounts are no
> longer able to post on to the IRPC list without being bumped off.
> 
> This has to do with a new policy about phishing and spam. We are
> working on upgrading the list settings to avoid having a whole lot
> of IRPC members automatically removed, or refused from participating
> on the list. In the meantime, if you have another email account it
> might be an idea to register using that one
> 
> In technical terms, situation is as follows:
> 
> Basically the situation now is such that Yahoo users should not
> send messages to the list at all. If they do, the message will
> get delivered to many but not all on the list*and*  the sender
> will get bumped off the list.
> 
> For the technically inclined, it might be good to give
> this link for more details:
> http://wiki.list.org/DEV/DMARC
> 
> The main point is:
> 
> "DMARC is a standard developed as a technique to reduce email spam and
> phishing. Unfortunately, it has negative consequences for mailing
> lists, essentially breaking long established mailing list norms,
> standards, and behaviors. Yahoo! recently began publishing a DMARC
> policy for rejecting all messages that fail the signature tests, and
> every mailing list with Yahoo! members started seeing bounces from
> these members. This has caused the Mailman community of members, list
> administrators, and developers enormous pain."
> 
> We are looking for ways to mitigate these negative effects as it has an impact on a large number of listservs.
> 
> If you want to use another email account from here on in, please go to
> https://lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org/mailman/listinfo/irp
> 
> Thanks for your understanding
> IRPC
> 
> -- 
> Internet Rights and Principles Coalition
> UN Internet Governance Forum
> http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/dynamiccoalitions/72-ibr
> Homepage: www.internetrightsandprinciples.org
> Twitter: @netrights
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