818440 - Wishlist: a function to "bounce" an email so it looks like the email address doesn't exist to the sender

Status: REOPENED

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, enhancement)

Description

[Ian]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0
Build ID: 20121024073032

Steps to reproduce:

Nothing, it's just a suggestion

Comment 1

[Ian]

Incredimail has this function.

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

This is in essence what's asked for in bug 11769, marked as a duplicate of the more general bug 11034. To achieve this functionality, you can go into Tools > Filters and set up a "Reply with Template" action as was introduced in bug 11034.

The current implementation of that function may not allow a custom reply that looks like an actual bounce as you may want to add information from the original message that's bounced back (like date, subject, and sender address). That's bug 21210 still pending a solution. However, there is a 3rd-party add-on available to add template variables, https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/14662 which apparently yet has to be updated for current TB versions by its author.

In general, the savvy recipient will be able to tell that the message was bounced by an e-mail client rather than a provider's server, and it only works when TB is running, thus it's always better to set up such rules at the provider's server.

Comment 3

[rsx11m]

(In reply to rsx11m from comment #2)
> https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/14662 which apparently yet has
> to be updated for current TB versions by its author.

Try https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/324497 instead.

Comment 5

[Martijn Dekker]

It is incorrect to mark this as a duplicate of bug 12916. That bug is about "bouncing" as in redirecting an already received message to additional recipients, whereas this bug is about "bouncing" as in returning a message to sender as undelivered. These are fundamentally different things.

(More precisely, this bug requests the ability to fake such a non-delivery notice -- because, if Thunderbird can even touch the message, by definition it has already been successfully delivered. I think it would be a very bad idea to implement fake non-delivery notifications. They cause many more problems than they solve.)

Comment 6

[Rimas Kudelis [use needinfo to ping]]

Unduped per Comment #5

Comment 7

[rsx11m]

(In reply to Martijn Dekker from comment #5)
> It is incorrect to mark this as a duplicate of bug 12916.

Agreed, this may be closer to bug 21210, but then it's more like a special case of that bug with a specific template that simulates the "delivery failed" message usually coming from a mail delivery agent.

> (More precisely, this bug requests the ability to fake such a non-delivery
> notice -- because, if Thunderbird can even touch the message, by definition
> it has already been successfully delivered. I think it would be a very bad
> idea to implement fake non-delivery notifications. They cause many more
> problems than they solve.)

Ok, now I've lost you. The statement "if Thunderbird can even touch the message, by definition it has already been successfully delivered" would imply that such a message *has* to be generated at the server-level, not in the handling e-mail client, but the latter is my understanding of what's asked for in the opening description. I'd sure agree that, if bouncing spam is the primary use case (to tell the sender "I'm not there" so that they don't try again), it's quite likely rather hardening the e-mail address in spam lists if it is obvious to the spammer that a client program has bounced the message (i.e., the e-mail address is valid and monitored). Or, are you arguing against the implementation of such a feature?

Comment 8

[rsx11m]

(In reply to rsx11m from comment #7)
> Or, are you arguing against the implementation of such a feature?

Reading your comment #5 again, that's apparently the case. Sorry for somehow getting it upside-down.