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Mailpush automatic notification



tuvia beker <becket@cc.huji.ac.il> writes:

> On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, mailpush support wrote:
> 
> > Dear Tuvia Beker
> > 
> > Thank you for your note.
> > Mailpush Users have an option to activate or deactivate auto-confirm for
> > their e-mail notification.
> > It is fully under their hands whether to activate it or to stop it.
> > If you feel uncomfortable because of that you can alwyas apply the
> > spcific user and ask him to unable this feature.
> > We dont consider it a SPAM but a way to inform you that the recipient
> > recieved the e-mail (even big and honored internet providers in israel
> > suggest such feature).
> 
> Dear Ariel,
> 
> I'm well aware of your company policy.
> Whether you admit it or not, this is bold SPAMming. This 'feature' should
> not be available AT ALL, as it is a nuisance to the general public.
> Just to give you a clear example: I'm subscribed to several mailing lists
> with an average size of about 300 members. Suppose 100 people in such a
> list are mailpush subscribers, and 50 out of those chose to enable your
> 'special feature'. Now whenever I send email to the list I will receive 50
> unsolicited 'replies' from people I do not even know.

Actually, quite a bit more. Recently I got 4 (!) notifications from
support@mailpush.com from the _same_ person after sending one message
to one mailing list. To re-iterate, I got 4 completely useless and
annoying messages because 1 (!) subscriber to a mailing list used the
"feature".

Since then I push all mail with support@mailpush.com in the "Reply-To"
field into /dev/null, but that is not a full solution since bandwidth
is still being wasted.

ATTENTION MAILPUSH -- A SUGGESTION FOLLOWS:

Admittedly, anyone can set up such automatic notification on one's own
computer, for instance with the "vacation" program, and one might have
a good reason for that. However, and this is something Mailpush must
take into account, "vacation" (or at least its newer versions) does
not send notifications of messages that have "Precedence:" set to
"bulk", "junk", or "list". So the problem with the "feature" in
question is not so much its existence as its implementation. Making
the software ignore messages based on the "Precedence:" field would
solve the problem for mailing list postings. Beyond that, anyone can
flame any particular user who chooses to use notification without a
good reason.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt          goldshmt@netvision.net.il   
BLOOMBERG L.P. (BFM)     oleg@bfr.co.il