What kind of wording is suspicious, when email couldn't be delivered?
March 6, 2023 1:23 PM Subscribe
This is about a statment in a Mailer Daemon. What are some examples of the non- suspicious kinds, and what are the suspicious kinds? In othere words what is a definitive thing that proves there is no shenanigans going on?
"Mailer Daemon" is presumably referring to some software that your ISP or someone else on the internet is running that is handling your mail. There are many specific implementations of this kind of software, each with its own filtering rules and mechanisms. Each installation can be configured differently.
There is no definitive answer to what is suspicious and not; entities that handle mail are constantly changing these rules to deal with the constantly-changing flow of spam.
posted by sriracha at 1:50 PM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
There is no definitive answer to what is suspicious and not; entities that handle mail are constantly changing these rules to deal with the constantly-changing flow of spam.
posted by sriracha at 1:50 PM on March 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
There used to be some desktop email clients that gave the option of replying to an email with a fake "not a valid email address" bounce message from mailer-daemon and for a while some people thought doing that was an effective "home remedy"-like tactic for discouraging spam (it wasn't).
I don't think there's any definitive thing that proves whether or not a mailer error message is legit or not. Certainly if it passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, it's was a legitimate piece of mail originating from the server that sent it. Determining whether the server itself actually sent it or whether someone's just goofing with you from their account would require looking at the "Return-Path" and "Received" parts of the email header.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:07 PM on March 6, 2023
I don't think there's any definitive thing that proves whether or not a mailer error message is legit or not. Certainly if it passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, it's was a legitimate piece of mail originating from the server that sent it. Determining whether the server itself actually sent it or whether someone's just goofing with you from their account would require looking at the "Return-Path" and "Received" parts of the email header.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 2:07 PM on March 6, 2023
There's really no way to tell without seeing the FULL email and the headers.
posted by kschang at 3:00 PM on March 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by kschang at 3:00 PM on March 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Is there a problem you're trying to solve? Why are you wondering about email headers that look suspicious vs. ones that don't look suspicious? Not sure this is the place to ask, if you're trying to get around email filters for nefarious reasons.
posted by emelenjr at 7:24 AM on March 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by emelenjr at 7:24 AM on March 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks all. It looks like it's a lot of work at least?
advicepig, to answer your Q "Are you seeing other kinds that are trying to pull something?"
"Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:" to me sounds ok. On the other hand, "I'm sorry ....." does not sound right, The word "I" in particular.
posted by amfgf at 4:02 PM on March 7, 2023
advicepig, to answer your Q "Are you seeing other kinds that are trying to pull something?"
"Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:" to me sounds ok. On the other hand, "I'm sorry ....." does not sound right, The word "I" in particular.
posted by amfgf at 4:02 PM on March 7, 2023
Some mail server admins get cute with the error messages. Again, there's really no way to tell without reading the headers, and letting someone know what sort of shenanigans you're suspecting.
posted by kschang at 4:26 AM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by kschang at 4:26 AM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think Google does the "customer service person" sounding bounces and I know some mail server software shipped with those. For me, it still boils down to, did I try to contact someone and it says I can't? I work in the industry, so I'm pretty good at reading these for information, and I really haven't seen any meaningful cases where it's some sort of scam besides when some jerk is sending email poorly pretending to be me.
posted by advicepig at 6:42 AM on March 8, 2023
posted by advicepig at 6:42 AM on March 8, 2023
Response by poster: kschang ok,but what is it about the headers though? And what is it about the full email?
posted by amfgf at 1:51 PM on March 8, 2023
posted by amfgf at 1:51 PM on March 8, 2023
Here is an explanation of what are email headers.
To put it simply, your email would go through a series of servers to arrive at your email server, and each of these servers would add a little bit to the headers. So there's a bit of tracking information on where the email came from. Spammers know this, so they sometimes insert fake entries in the header, but most are not this sophisticated. A sysadmin or a poweruser would be able to interpret the header to tell you if something's amiss.
posted by kschang at 4:38 AM on March 9, 2023
To put it simply, your email would go through a series of servers to arrive at your email server, and each of these servers would add a little bit to the headers. So there's a bit of tracking information on where the email came from. Spammers know this, so they sometimes insert fake entries in the header, but most are not this sophisticated. A sysadmin or a poweruser would be able to interpret the header to tell you if something's amiss.
posted by kschang at 4:38 AM on March 9, 2023
Response by poster: kschang, By the way I was asking what is it about the header, that would be picked out by the recipient, as something tha just doesn't look like from Gmail, Outlook etc. But I want to put the headers thing aside for now.
What about the statement "Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:" vs. "I'm sorry ..."?
Aren't spammer trying to sell me something whether it's a product a service, etc. There is no link to click on, there is no mention of a product/service.
posted by amfgf at 1:40 PM on March 9, 2023
What about the statement "Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:" vs. "I'm sorry ..."?
Aren't spammer trying to sell me something whether it's a product a service, etc. There is no link to click on, there is no mention of a product/service.
posted by amfgf at 1:40 PM on March 9, 2023
I personally don't see a difference. One's in "computer-ese", and one's in plain language. Mail admin can customize any error message, and some may have gone for the plain language error instead of computer jargon.
of course, I haven't seen the whole message, so I wouldn't really know. I'm just guessing based on the tiny tidbit you've revealed so far. :)
posted by kschang at 9:05 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
of course, I haven't seen the whole message, so I wouldn't really know. I'm just guessing based on the tiny tidbit you've revealed so far. :)
posted by kschang at 9:05 AM on March 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: I thought everything is done by the software, not by hand one email at a time.
According to security, everything is supposed be the real thing and look like the real thing, at least so we don't waste time trying to figure out whether it is fake or not. For example, we're supposed to look at any url to make sure we don't end up in the wrong website. If I were an admin I wouldn't want to change something that wouldn't look right and waste people's time for nothing when the original is completely clear.
posted by amfgf at 1:20 PM on March 10, 2023
According to security, everything is supposed be the real thing and look like the real thing, at least so we don't waste time trying to figure out whether it is fake or not. For example, we're supposed to look at any url to make sure we don't end up in the wrong website. If I were an admin I wouldn't want to change something that wouldn't look right and waste people's time for nothing when the original is completely clear.
posted by amfgf at 1:20 PM on March 10, 2023
"Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:" to me sounds ok. On the other hand, "I'm sorry ....." does not sound right, The word "I" in particular.
You're really overthinking this. The internet and computer culture in general has a long history of whimsy and anthropomorphism in error messages and while largely people have gone to generic error messages, there's still plenty of them out there. Varnish, a powerful web cache server that almost certainly helps power a bunch of sites that you use, refers to some errors as Guru Meditation Errors, which is a callback to Amiga crash messages in the 80s. The Amiga reference would be meaningless to 99.999% of internet users at this point. I teach classes on what different server errors mean to computing professionals based on their error code (rather than flavor text) because even people that deal with this stuff 40 hours a week don't understand a lot of the meaning.
The term daemon is a geeky reference to thermodynamics. There's a ton of references to HAL's deadpan "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" in computer culture. There's quite a few collection of funny 404 errors for websites.
In othere words what is a definitive thing that proves there is no shenanigans going on?
Other than the afore mentioned cryptographic signatures that can help assure that the mail does come from citibank.com rather than citobank.com pretending to be the real thing, no.
There's no magic header that proves lack of evil because if I control the server, I can just add that header even though my intent is evil. E-mail messages are just ASCII text and other than something like a cryptographically signed value (which works for showing that the server is who it claims to be but does not work for evil or not evil), someone with control of a server can put whatever they want into it.
I thought everything is done by the software, not by hand one email at a time.
In the case of things like e-mail, absolutely. I'm not sure what you thought anyone here said that would indicate differently.
If I were an admin I wouldn't want to change something that wouldn't look right and waste people's time for nothing when the original is completely clear.
The internet was built by geeks powered by too much Jolt cola, deadpan British humor, and an appreciation for discordianism, callbacks and pastiche, and surrealism. There's an entire paper specifying how you could, theoretically, implement the protocols that underlie the internet using carrier pigeons. Geeks in general have a weird sense of humor.
I've been on the internet for quite a long time and have never before heard of someone being upset by an e-mail error message saying, "I'm sorry."
To emelenjr's point, what mischief do you think someone would be trying to cause with messages saying that an e-mail couldn't be delivered? As long as you did actually send an e-mail to the specified address, the bounceback message is probably true and accurate. Don't click on links in them. Figure out if there was a typo in the address or if the error indicates something like their mailbox is full, reach out to the person through an alternate channel.
posted by Candleman at 1:59 AM on March 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
You're really overthinking this. The internet and computer culture in general has a long history of whimsy and anthropomorphism in error messages and while largely people have gone to generic error messages, there's still plenty of them out there. Varnish, a powerful web cache server that almost certainly helps power a bunch of sites that you use, refers to some errors as Guru Meditation Errors, which is a callback to Amiga crash messages in the 80s. The Amiga reference would be meaningless to 99.999% of internet users at this point. I teach classes on what different server errors mean to computing professionals based on their error code (rather than flavor text) because even people that deal with this stuff 40 hours a week don't understand a lot of the meaning.
The term daemon is a geeky reference to thermodynamics. There's a ton of references to HAL's deadpan "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" in computer culture. There's quite a few collection of funny 404 errors for websites.
In othere words what is a definitive thing that proves there is no shenanigans going on?
Other than the afore mentioned cryptographic signatures that can help assure that the mail does come from citibank.com rather than citobank.com pretending to be the real thing, no.
There's no magic header that proves lack of evil because if I control the server, I can just add that header even though my intent is evil. E-mail messages are just ASCII text and other than something like a cryptographically signed value (which works for showing that the server is who it claims to be but does not work for evil or not evil), someone with control of a server can put whatever they want into it.
I thought everything is done by the software, not by hand one email at a time.
In the case of things like e-mail, absolutely. I'm not sure what you thought anyone here said that would indicate differently.
If I were an admin I wouldn't want to change something that wouldn't look right and waste people's time for nothing when the original is completely clear.
The internet was built by geeks powered by too much Jolt cola, deadpan British humor, and an appreciation for discordianism, callbacks and pastiche, and surrealism. There's an entire paper specifying how you could, theoretically, implement the protocols that underlie the internet using carrier pigeons. Geeks in general have a weird sense of humor.
I've been on the internet for quite a long time and have never before heard of someone being upset by an e-mail error message saying, "I'm sorry."
To emelenjr's point, what mischief do you think someone would be trying to cause with messages saying that an e-mail couldn't be delivered? As long as you did actually send an e-mail to the specified address, the bounceback message is probably true and accurate. Don't click on links in them. Figure out if there was a typo in the address or if the error indicates something like their mailbox is full, reach out to the person through an alternate channel.
posted by Candleman at 1:59 AM on March 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
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If I didn't send an email like that, then it's probably someone pretending to be me, but it still a real email problem.
Are you seeing other kinds that are trying to pull something? I usually see them as evidence that some scammer is using my email as the from address.
posted by advicepig at 1:30 PM on March 6, 2023