Mailing Lists and DMARC

[cdkeen]

Recently yahoo.com implemented a DMARC policy that will cause emails From: yahoo.com users to be bounced by many other services, and as of April 22, 2014 aol.com has also done this. This has caused significant difficulties for mailing list users and administrators alike across many providers. Sonic.net intends to upgrade the version of mailman we are running (as well as upgrade the hardware on which it is running) currently to a newer version that offers more flexibility in combating the problems created by these email providers recent DMARC policy changes. We intend to complete these upgrades within 1-2 weeks time. I have included instructions for checking a particular provider's policy below as well as some links to more information.

Here is a FAQ about DMARC in general: http://dmarc.org/faq.html

You can use the command line utility dig to check your mail provider's domain for a published DMARC policy:

Code: Select all

# dig txt _dmarc.yahoo.com +short
"v=DMARC1\; p=reject\; sp=none\; pct=100\; rua=mailto:[email protected], mailto:[email protected]\;"

# dig txt _dmarc.comcast.net +short
"v=DMARC1\; p=none\; rua=mailto:[email protected]\;"

# dig txt _dmarc.sonic.net +short

Yahoo.com's policy (https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/SLN24016 ... sions=true) is set to reject, Comcast's is set up for research only (http://postmaster.comcast.net/dmarcupdate.html) and is not set to reject, and for example Sonic.net does not publish a DMARC record.

If you do not have access to the dig utility you can use a web based service such as this: https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/ to perform a lookup on a given domain.

Here is a link to a post discussing the impact of the DMARC implementation by yahoo and other providers written by core mailman developer Mark Sapiro: http://wiki.list.org/x/ggARAQ

[tikvah]

Now that it's been more than 1-2 weeks, please update us on what is happening.

This is really a horrific situation for us list owners and Sonic has been AWFUL at informing us of the problem (my first support ticket got a response that the problem was ordinary spam) and even worse at updates. Aside from this cryptic and unuseful post, the only information I have received came because I sent support multiple emails insisting that they respond accurately...and they still acted like the response was a special favor, when they should have sent emails to all listowners informing them of the problem in the first place, with regular updates.

Even so, I've essentially been told that it's my fault for not configuring my list in a way that will basically break it (and that I don't understand how to do anyway). I was also told to deliberately turn off an important feature (auto-unsubscribe of repeatedly bouncing emails), which I did. But since Sonic has chosen to deny listowners access to bounce messages, I have no way of knowing if my subscribers are still bouncing, or how often.

So what's the current status?

[glowell]

I'd really like to the know the status of the Mailman upgrade as well.

Thanks,
Gary

[plg2012]

Agreed! I phoned sonic again today to ask about the upgrade. The fellow I spoke to said he would fill out a "ticket" for an upgrade from 2.1.11 > 2.1.16+

http://forums.cpanel.net/f43/yahoos-new ... 02751.html

The DMARC situation is a nightmare for list members and moderators.

[cdkeen]

We are continuing our upgrade of our mailing list server and should be finished very soon. The new listman will run a mailman version with the new options to work around the issues caused by yahoo, aol, and others dmarc reject policy implementations. I will post more information here (hopefully) by the end of this week. Thanks for your patience.

[tikvah]

Please make sure you also email the final information to ALL Sonic listowners.

Cyndi

[gkeller]

Cyndi,

This upgrade is complete, and the new dmarc_moderation_action has been set to 1 for all sonic lists. This should allow yahoo users to receive the missing list traffic by rewriting the From header for them. Users on other ESPs will not see a change. Let me know if you have any problems!

[tikvah]

Thank you. I haven't received the email yet. I hope it's coming. Most listowners do not use the Boards and most of the few who do do not follow this thread.

When will it be fixed for people who don't use Yahoo who have lost posts due to this issue?

Do I need to do anything on my end?

Cyndi

[thulsa_doom]

Thank you. I haven't received the email yet. I hope it's coming. Most listowners do not use the Boards and most of the few who do do not follow this thread.

When will it be fixed for people who don't use Yahoo who have lost posts due to this issue?

Do I need to do anything on my end?

Cyndi

This isn't a fix specific to Yahoo, but a general fix for messages that were rejected due to strict DMARC rules.

Messages previously rejected weren't queued up for later deliver, so important messages that didn't get through won't find their way through unless re-sent.

[tikvah]

When I say I didn't see the email, I don't mean the emails that the DMARC issue hosed. I mean that Sonic.net needs to send out an email notification to all listowners who run lists through Sonic informing them of this issue (this should have been done months ago, as I asked you to do multiple times) and to keep them informed of the fixes.

Cyndi