Subject: Just a heads up....

From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 May 1999 10:48:05 -0400

I know this isn't DRUMS business as it doesn't impact our documents,
but as a lot of mail implementors hang out here, and there aren't
really any other lists for bringing this up, I thought I would mention
this problem.

Lately, I've gotten on way too many occasions this sort of mail
message back from a mailer daemon (some information elided to protect
the guilty, but this started as a real message):

	Message-Id: <********>
	From: POSTMASTER@*******
	To: [email-masked]
	Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 01:52:13 -0400
	Subject: Undeliverable message
	MIME-Version: 1.0
	Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

	------- Failure Reasons  --------

	Recipient user name  not unique.  Several matches found in
	Name & Address Book. 
	[email-masked]

In other words, Somewhere Out There, some idiots have created one or
more mail systems such that, if someone new joins the company, someone
old suddenly gets all their mail bouncing because now someone else
with a similar name is in the database.

This is phenomenally brain-dead. I've seen some idiotic things done at
various firms, but this is really in the top percentile of imbecilic
ideas.

Now, were this not a mail system running at one of the largest
companies on earth, and had I not seen this from several company mail
systems in the last six months, I'd ignore the problem, but the fact
that anything this stupid has become this widespread leads me to think
it should be mentioned around lots of people who are in a position to
stop this.

Perry

---

From: Brad Knowles <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 17:18:44 +0200

>with a similar name is in the database.

    Old, old problem.  See
<http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section3.html#3.3>, although it certainly
predates the time when I took over the sendmail FAQ from Eric (sometime
in 1995, as I recall,  and I'm sure it had been around long before then)
and started posting it regularly to comp.mail.sendmail.

    Who was it that said "People who do not learn from history's mistakes
are doomed to repeat them"?

-- 
  These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy
 ____________________________________________________________________
|o| Brad Knowles, <[email-masked]>            Belgacom Skynet NV/SA |o|
|o| Systems Architect, News & FTP Admin      Rue Col. Bourg, 124   |o|
|o| Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.11.11/12.49         B-1140 Brussels       |o|
|o| http://www.skynet.be                     Belgium               |o|
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