I've had procmail for a while, but recently upgraded it with some extremely aggressive rules for accepting e-mail.
If you've been trying to reach me by e-mail, but received a bounce notification or nastygram in response (you'll know what I mean if you've gotten it), then chances are you've violated some basic rule of e-mail etiquette. I'm writing this page (it's not done yet) to help you figure out why.
Mail gets rejected by me, and an increasing number of other weary Internet users for a few simple reasons of common courtesy. Rather then try to educate everyone who writes to me, I just let a machine do the work for me. It's just a machine, so you shouldn't take what it says personally, right?
So, lets go over a few e-mail social faux pax's that just don't fly here at kmarsh at charm dott net.
So, you've sent the cookie recipe, the ancient Craig Shergold plea for postcards, the latest virus hoax, NMBDA, or some other piece of well-traveled Internet hokum to me and 200 of your closest friends. Well, guess what. Some of those 200 friends will also send me their personal responses to you, because they don't know what "Reply-To-All" means. But, someone who does know what it means, will also send me, your 200 closest friends, and 200 of their closest friends, the latest political homily decrying President Bush II's actions against non-endangered Alaskan Caribou, a species known to interact well with human development.
And then, one of your friend's friend's 200 friends will be a spammer. So, I'll get spam advertisements everyday for the rest of my life.
See what you've started? I consider my e-mail address to be private. I PAY for the time and resources to handle my e-mail, unlike postal fourth-class bulk mail, where the mailer pays for it. So please don't try the tired bulk-mail analogy. As for free speech, sure, as long as YOU are paying for it. This mailbox is private property. Trespass and suffer the consequences (boing!)
Besides, I like Mr. Bush. I like Caribou too, and hope to hunt them someday. They're a well-managed population and I don't expect that to change, oil or not.
If you want to engage in serious dialogue about what I believe, I'm very open to that. I don't expect to change your mind, any more than you should expect to change mine. I have helped some people to realize where I'm coming from. I am also already on good terms with some vegetarian paganist liberals. Well, a few. OK, one.
If you just want to vent some steam, I usually won't respond, and will just block your address. Perhaps some white, computer literate, conservative, hunting, scotch drinking born-again male has wronged you grievously in the past. I'm truly sorry, but it wasn't me. Life is short, so get over it.
If you received a letter saying "This correspondence is ended" or somesuch, then you have no recourse. If you unloaded a truckload of vitriol and wish to apologize, and get bounced, its really too late. If you know you have been blocked, don't go to a friend's account and send me mail from there. This will result in an instant report to both of your accounts' Internet Service Providers. Chances are you have violated several Terms of Service or Policies. One idiot started in on me from his work address after I blocked his personal account. He at least lost his work account... I don't do this as a matter of course, just for the persistant ones.
If you are an animals-are-humans rights activist or other person who's just pissed me off, then reading this page will do you no good (insofar as getting into contact with me, your letters will never be seen by me.) If you're a friend (or want to be), this might help.
If you think that Christians are the cause of all the World's wrongs, if you like to pigeonhole all Christians' personalities as a parody of televangelists (TV ministries for TV minds, I say), if your toleration of everyone and everything extends everywhere except to Christians, then get a life and go elsewhere to spew your vitriol. Genuine, compassionate atheists, agnostics and theists are welcome.
At one point I had three penpals forwarding these on an almost daily basis. I guess they felt I didn't have the mental accuity to subscribe on my own, or bring up LaughWeb's web page. I was rather hurt, as they were otherwise close friends.
If your Joke of the Day has been bounced, simply write me a real e-mail letter instead of forwarding something someone else wrote.
Please check these links for your outrageous story, the Alt.folklore.urban Usenet newsgroup archive, and the more readable Urban Legends page. If it's in there, I've heard of it already. Examples: The Burnt/Dropped Diver, the Good Times Virus hoax, Craig Shergold (true but 10 years out of date, no more cards desired), the $250 Cookie Recipe, etc.
Well, there's nothing that brings out the schoolyard scrapper in me like a physical threat. Pass on this e-mail, I am told, or I will suffer financial ruin, social ostracization and worse. And, can you believe it, the people that mail me this stuff are purportedly my "friends". Ha! My true friends are not superstitious, they do not threaten me with worldly demise, and they don't waste my time with chain letters.
Perhaps some weak mental justification occurs before forwarding such drivel to me, like the supposed luck that will occur when I continue the chain of annoyance. No thank you, my destiny is in the capable hands of the Living God, not in the stars, planets, or fickle fate. I'll take my chances with the gracious Creator and his Word over an apocraphyl story of a lottery winner (I don't even play the lottery anyway. I bought one ticket 5 years ago, and I'm still angry that I didn't win. I want my dollar back!)
These are illegal, that's all I have to say about that. Don't involve me in your crimes. If you don't believe me, read this link at the US Post Office Inspector General.
You have no recourse. You can't get through. I've got mass mailers blocked by name, by origin, by fingerprint, by heuristics, you name it, I've obsessively analyzed it and ruled it out six ways to Sunday. At most I might log the header and review them in a month. Chatty personal e-mail lookalikes too, I've got your number. Spam in my INBOX is now so rare I'm not sure what I'd do if I got it again.
But you're not a spammer, you sent it only to me, its not a chain letter, et cetera, you're just a sincere person trying to get through to me! What went wrong?
First of all, it may not be your fault. If your ISP's DNS or Mail is misconfigured, it could label your e-mail as "may be forged" "Actual sender is x..." or somesuch. These just need to be fixed on your end by the ISP support folks.
Try rewording things to sound more human! Try being nicer, I'm serious, lots of nasty words get letters bounced before I see them. If it looks like a sales pitch, it's in /dev/null before you're finished hitting the send key. Try not CC-ing so many zillions of people. If it's huge, try cutting out everything but the important stuff. If its empty, try typing in something thoughtful. If it's HTML or a WORD Document for the body, please try to get a life and learn a real e-mail application, they are not that hard to use. If you need to send me some kind of file or document, please contact me via normal e-mail first and I will make an arrangement for you.
I log the rejection of about 20 to 30 spams to my mailbox every day! My email address is regularly extracted from my Internet activities and illegally resold, along with millions of others. My anti-spam activities have resulted in mail-bombs and other reprisals. I maintain this address in defiance of these criminals- I refuse to let them shut me down.
Despite this electronic war, I keep up with many penpals. I effortlessly send and receive dozens of legitimate e-mails weekly, and stay involved in several discussion groups, despite the spammer's best efforts.
The rules that guard my mailbox allow me to continue to receive and send e-mail in peace. 99% of people corresponding with me have no problem at all.
The etiquette I describe here may be necessary for contacting me, but it can make all of your e-mailing more pleasant for you and your penpals.
Happy e-mailing!