10 Jul 14 Sympa Mailing Lists and DMARC

Yahoo and AOL have introduced a new technology called DMARC. Without going into the technical details, it completely breaks all internet mailing lists as we know it. We have instituted a work around in Sympa. All lists now have a subscriber called dmarc_fix@ala.org. Do not, under any circumstances, delete this user. Without this user, mails sent to and from AOL and Yahoo members will be bounced. Any email sent from Yahoo or AOL is now being modified to so that it comes from Name@yahoo via <dmarc_fix@ala.org>. The real sender is demarc_fix@ala.org not the original sender. This is by design in order to work around the problem. Going forward it is important to reply to the list, not to an individual sender. If you reply to an individual sender, the email will be sent to dmarc_fix@ala.org and will be discarded. If you have already deleted this user, please add it back as a list member. The options should be set to reception:nomail and visibility:hidden.

 

If you are interested in the technological aspects of DMARC and want a more in depth analysis, PC world wrote a great article at http://www.pcworld.com/article/2141120/yahoo-email-antispoofing-policy-breaks-mailing-lists.html.

 

We plan on upgrading Sympa later this summer. The newest version has features to help work around the DMARC problem. However, it should be noted that this new technology fundamentally breaks mailing lists, and the work arounds are not a fix. They simply work around the issue. The problem is not exclusive to Sympa and extends to all known mailing list technologies available.