1342809 - Popup warning if answer to no-reply/noreply@ email address

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Marc Gutt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

I receive a email from "[e-mail]" and answer to it.


Actual results:

I will likely get a mailer return for a non existent / not used mailbox.


Expected results:

If I click on "answer" it should popup a warning that this recipient would likely not receive mails as such addresses are mainly used for sending. In the ACP there should be an option to add more keywords like "no-reply".

The reason for this idea is mainly because of some of my forum users that try to answer notification mails. And do not think they answer to containing texts. Our notification mails contain only the link to the subscribed thread or pm. I know that because my noreply mailbox exists and I forward all "Re:" mails to our main mailbox and try to help those users to find the correct way to answer. But finally I think it would be better the mail program stops the user before sending such mails, because not many websites have an existing noreply-mailbox.

Comment 2

[bass]

That's a good idea even if no other email clients would do that; my father gets (very) technical auto replies in (international) English, as both he and the site's server administrators are Dutch natives and slightly computer illiterate (with often better logic as I found out, in my view, and simpler requests).

I hope those sites are helped with it as well, by being notified through getting this message, (this report by Marc Gutt,)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1342809 Marc Gutt.

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

I'd suggest we do it like this

When doing any of the reply commands, check From/Reply-To.
if (/no.?reply@/i.test(address)) {
Put up a confirmation.

--- Reply not supported ---

The address (noreply@...) indicates that this is not a monitored address. A reply likely won’t be read by anyone.

                                         [ Reply Anyway ] [ Cancel ]

}

If reply anyway, open the compose window. Otherwise cancel.

Probably code around here: https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/b4fe8bb2aada9ad78b5ff543bce5f8e76e4ef9a5/mail/components/compose/content/MsgComposeCommands.js#3515

Comment 4

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Perhaps also cater for donotreply@. So if (/^(do)?no.?reply@/i.test(address))

Comment 5

[Patrick Cloke [:clokep]]

Looking through my inbox I see quite a few which also have a prefix made of a-z/dashes/underscores (something account-noreply@foo) and a couple of do_not_reply@foo. Something more like [a-z-]*(do.)?not?.?reply@ might catch them all, but that could have false positives. :)

Comment 6

[Marc Gutt]

@Patrick, good idea. I checked mine, too:

90%:
noreply@
no-reply@

9%:
[A-Z]+-noreply@

1%:
no_reply@
donotreply@
no.reply@
no_reply@
SupportPortal-NotReply@
do-not-reply-here@
do-not-reply@
DoNotReply@
nicht-antworten@ (German for "do not reply")

Possible false-positive that contained "reply@":
cs-reply@

So it seems this could be sufficient:
.*not?.?reply@

Comment 7

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

(In reply to Marc Gutt from comment #6)

@Patrick, good idea. I checked mine, too:
So it seems this could be sufficient:
.*not?.?reply@

This would capture too much, such as notereply@ and knot-reply@. I would say

/^(.*[-_.])?(donot|not|no)[-_.]?reply([-_.].*)?@/i

Key points:

1. Only accept the separators [-_.]. So we don't capture notereply. We could extend this with [_\p{Dash}\p{Terminal_Punctuation}] to capture more unicode symbols, but I think this is sufficient.
2. If there is a prefix, it must end with [-_.]. So we don't capture knot-reply. Similar with a suffix.
3. Only accept do and not in combination, as part of do-not-reply. Don't match dono-reply.

Out of the ones you listed, only the non-english versions will not match.

Comment 8

[bass]

That's all great, I like that a lot.

In addition, I'd like to propose this line in the or an email footer (in the very email with the no_reply@[...] sender, put in by the sender), the 'message' being a popup or embedded somewhere, however the user likes it (footer can be hidden like the header, or cut off if the user don't want it, in total or just to keep the b[old], i, and u markup and cut off anything else):

%^%mdb
button reply=message en "Replies to this email address are not monitored. Please follow this link for the contact options: www.website.com, or call this number: 555 555 6. Our website and phone number are registered (publicly verifiable) at www.websites.gov"
%^%mdb.

For your judgement. You may use whatever you may think is relevant. Of course such a footer is useful for other stuff, like replacing HTML all together, making it redundant, or for specifying a password to your inbox, or for specifying a paragraph as source code to optionally syntax highlight, if installed, but the focus here is on the no-reply feature, in addition to and not replacing the handling of Thunderbird itself.

Comment 9

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

(In reply to bass from comment #8)

In addition, I'd like to propose this line in the or an email footer ...

I'm unsure about your suggestion. If you receive an email from [e-mail], do you want thunderbird to add a button that opens a new email composed to, for example, [e-mail]? If the organisation sending the email has such an address, it would be their responsibility to include a Reply-To field, or include the information within the email they send. Thunderbird would only get it wrong if it tried to guess an alternative email that accepts queries.

Comment 10

[bass]

Thank you for your feedback Henry. I agree with your assessment (or evaluation, conclusion) that the sender would then have provided a reply email address. I've had this in my head; the reply button wouldn't then open a reply window, but would be showing a message instead. (With the 'en' for English, maybe a 'nl' text too for Dutch, I'm Dutch, written by the sender.)

So it would set what the existing reply button (in Thunderbird) would do.

Thank you for asking a clarification. So, in the example just a message specified in the quotes-", or something unique, like a starting-{ and closing-}, so if the reply button is clicked, the user is presented a message. (Disabled by default in my opinion, that would be better.)

The sender may have specified what the reply button should do (so in addition to how Thunderbird acts on noreply@ addresses), but of course if the user wants to open a reply window anyway (I don't see why but if they want to), or just like to enable the noreply recognition, which I like too; feel free to choose that the reply button should do.

(Do let me know if I made things worse.)

One other thing I should note; I know we don't need or can't use a HTML/plain text discussion, especially while in another subject, (but to point out the usefulness in my opinion;) if it may make HTML obsolete (using the same such footer), feel free to use HTML anyway. I'm happy that Thunderbird supports it. (Other examples are found elsewhere in this forum, thanks for that.)

Comment 11

[bass]

The 'noreply@..':

I've been searching through my inbox, which goes back years, and I come across these variants mainly;
(.*)noreply@ (with something preceding, including one with alphabet only, no hyphen) (and I like this one: 'Noreply-noreply@') (155 counts, unique)
no-reply@ (51 times)
no_reply@ (11 unique counts)

and indeed a few (but still)
no.reply@ (2)

do_not_reply@ (and an all caps version from Microsoft)
donotreply@
nonreply@ (although this one is probably a typo.. anyway)

not sure what this is:
auto-reply@
(..._)autoreply@

and maybe a 'report or add email address as a no-reply email address', that just reports or adds the part before the @ to a list.

And a 'report or add an email address that is actually not a noreply email address'.

I don't see any Dutch translated 'noreply' in my inbox, which is odd, coming from Dutch companies, but that could be added (in a custom list) to a good start (of catching the main and known noreply email address types). Perhaps as a most commonly occurring non-regex list, with the ones I got, in addition to a regex type detection of noreply addresses you are proposing, and the option to manually add more at a later date, or put some on the 'whitelist' that are mistaken for a noreply email address. (Case insensitive.)

Comment 12

[bass]

I found one Dutch variant:
geenantwoord@ ('geen antwoord')

Those were the significant versions I think.

Comment 13

[bass]

This is extra, secondary and optional, (it doesn't replace the noreply address detection,) elaborating on what I was talking about, two example emails, two more variations giving you the handle. With some bits to ignore computerwise but I want you to. (Please start a separate thread should you fancy something.)

So these examples let you know you can't or shouldn't reply (by means of the reply button), slightly more elaborated than just a 'noreply' variable or line in the footer (in addition to the pro-active email detection measures).

{Dear Sir,

before I begin, you can't reply to this email for this and this reason, please follow the website instructions on company.com. (Without spaces.) (=website.)

OK, you requested ... amazing offer, ... etc ...

Yours,

Joe Mansion
Janeway 301
D1234, Eggcity

%^%mdb
p2 noreply
p2w21.22 website=http://www.company.com/contact
p5 %firstname %lastname \n %street \n %postalcode, %city
salutation First name basis is fine, call me Joe
%^%mdb.
}

{Dear Sir,

%^%noreply
before I begin, you can't reply to this email for this and this reason, please follow the website instructions on company.com/contact. (Without spaces.) (Or let your browser know you're entering a website.)
%^%noreply.

OK, you requested ... amazing offer, ... etc ...

Yours,

Joe Mansion
Janeway 301
D1234, Eggcity
}

Comment 14

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

@bass, please let's stay on focus here. We're not going to add anything to the message body. We'll just check the sending email and inform with a dialog based on that.

Comment 15

[bass]

@Magnus, Check. Thanks for straighten me out.

Comment 16

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

The 91 string freeze is coming up Monday. Any progress?

Comment 17

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #16)

The 91 string freeze is coming up Monday. Any progress?

I tried to follow the approach you suggested using ComposeStartup, but I couldn't access the composeFields.to property in that method: all the fields are empty strings at this point, but if I print composeFields to the console and print the fields after the window is loaded they are set. I couldn't figure out the logic of the overall process to know where to access the field. And I wasn't sure of the location of the last bailing point before the window is (visually) loaded.

So I was going to ask you about it when you got back. I didn't know this was planned for the 91 release.

Comment 18

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Please attach the WIP. It's hard to comment without code.

Comment 19

[Henry Wilkes (they/them) [:henry-x]]

(In reply to Magnus Melin [:mkmelin] from comment #18)

Please attach the WIP. It's hard to comment without code.

There's no WIP to show, I just did some debugging once my first step failed. I just tried to print console.log(params.composeFields.to) in the place suggested (https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/4fe4d110e94220cccdd4cead5bc94c607a5e849c/mail/components/compose/content/MsgComposeCommands.js#3526) and it was empty. But printing the composeFields object to the console, and inspecting it in the Developer Tools Console later and the fields are set.

You can see what I mean using in the same place

  console.log(params.composeFields);
  console.log(`To: ${params.composeFields.to}`);
  console.log(`From: ${params.composeFields.from}`);
  console.log(`Reply-To: ${params.composeFields.replyTo}`);

Do you want something in before the string freeze? (what time is the deadline on the 12th?) Someone suggested that we could push a string only patch just for translators whilst we figure out the implementation.

Comment 20

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

The merge usually happen European early evening time.

Comment 21

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: Bug 1342809 - Popup warning if answer to no-reply/noreply@ email address. r=henry

Comment 22

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/5053b99a8b89
Popup warning if answer to no-reply/noreply@ email address. r=henry

Comment 23

[Rachel Martin]

The message gets triggered for a newsgroup follow-up where the author's address is Someone <[e-mail]>.

Comment 24

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Please file a new bug about that.

Comment 25

[Rachel Martin]

https://github.com/Betterbird/thunderbird-patches/blob/main/91/bugs/1342809-follow-up-newgroup.patch

Comment 26

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: Bug 1342809 follow-up: Don't check the address on newsgroup-only posts. r=rnons

Based on https://github.com/Betterbird/thunderbird-patches/blob/main/91/bugs/1342809-follow-up-newgroup.patch

Comment 27

[Phabricator Automation]

Comment on attachment 9262647 [details]
Bug 1342809 follow-up: Don't check the address on newsgroup-only posts. r=rnons

Revision D138011 was moved to bug 1752741. Setting attachment 9262647 [details] to obsolete.

Comment 28

[Mikko Rantalainen]

Could you reconsider to change the regex from

/^(.*[._-])?(do[._-]?not|no)[._-]?reply([._-].*)?@/

to

/^(.*[._-])?(do[._-]?not|no)[._-]?reply([._+-].*)?@/

? That is, allow "+" after the no-reply part as a separator to allow tagging the From address.

That would allow correctly detecting email address such as

[e-mail]

which I think would be sensible format for automated emails to encode information in the From address in case some mail agent allows replying to that address.

Comment 29

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

That sounds good. But let's do it in a new bug. Are you able to submit a patch?