Unable to reply to e-mail in Webmail

[MyNameHere]

Hi everyone.

I received an e-mail this morning and every time I try to reply to it I get a failure message more or less like the one reported in this thread. But no one ever responded to the other OP.

I won't bother trying to post the e-mail, but I will try to give some pertinent details. I'd be glad to forward (or try to forward) the e-mail to someone who might be able to interpret the problem.

I did a "reply all." I got a failure message:

<[at]localhost.cesmail.net>:

Sorry, I couldn't find any host named localhost.cesmail.net. (#5.1.2)

and in the "copy of the message" there was nothing on the To line except "To:" -- but my cc's looked okay.

The thing that looked strange in the original e-mail was the sender's address. I've obfuscated it, but in the composition window (when replying) it looked like this:

"Last, First \\(ABC\\)" <FLast1[at]ABCI.com>

The double quotes and backslashes (which I assume are escape characters) were in the To field of the composition window. I'm thinking these escape characters caused some kind of problem on posting back to the server.

Anyway, I think this is not the first time I've encountered the problem, and obviously it looks like the same problem (at least the same symptom) that ob1db had in the earlier thread.

[Wazoo]

I received an e-mail this morning and every time I try to reply to it I get a failure message more or less like the one reported in this thread. But no one ever responded to the other OP.

No one answered him for a number of reasons .... you';d need to analyze more of his postings/discussion to pull that storyline into place.

I won't bother trying to post the e-mail, but I will try to give some pertinent details. I'd be glad to forward (or try to forward) the e-mail to someone who might be able to interpret the problem.

How about copying what you've got, hit the paste-your-spam-in-the-box page and generate a Tracking URL?

The double quotes and backslashes (which I assume are escape characters) were in the To field of the composition window. I'm thinking these escape characters caused some kind of problem on posting back to the server.

Anyway, I think this is not the first time I've encountered the problem, and obviously it looks like the same problem (at least the same symptom) that ob1db had in the earlier thread.

42711[/snapback]

Yes, what you are showing is standard "database" type stuff, but the question is how it got there ...

[MyNameHere]

Okay, I created a tracking URL, but I obfuscated the sender's e-mail address and all the domain names and IP addresses and even some other identifying information. Otherwise, if I posted it here, the sender's e-mail and so on would be accessible to anyone who looked at the report. However, all I did was replace certain letters with dashes (-) and others with letters or numbers, so the identifying info is obfuscated.

In fact, I'm pretty confident I've removed enough identifying information to make it difficult for anyone to track it back. So I'm just going to paste the entire thing here:

Return-Path: <g------1[at]abci.com>
Delivered-To: spamcop-net-----me-----[at]spamcop.net
Received: (qmail 30570 invoked from network); 10 May 2006 13:50:09 -0000
X-spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.1 (2006-03-10) on blade2.cesmail.net
X-spam-Level: 
X-spam-Status: hits=0.0 tests=HTML_MESSAGE,UNPARSEABLE_RELAY version=3.1.1
Received: from unknown (222.222.2.222)
  by blade2.cesmail.net with QMQP; 10 May 2006 13:50:09 -0000
Received: from listserv.abci.com (HELO abci.com) (111.111.11.11)
  by mailgate.cesmail.net with SMTP; 10 May 2006 13:50:08 -0000
Received: from ([33.3.33.33])
	by mail1.abci.com with SMTP  id UJ-23423.asf23435;
	Wed, 10 May 2006 09:49:38 -0400
Received: from ntabc351.abci.com ([44.4.44.41]) by ntabc353.abci.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
  Wed, 10 May 2006 09:49:38 -0400
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
Content-class: urn:content-classes:message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Dinners for six
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 09:49:38 -0400
Message-ID: <33A_______________________________30E1[at]ntabc351.abci.com>
X-MS-Has-Attach: 
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: 
Thread-Topic: Dinners for six
Thread-Index: AcZ0OJSxs9z+88ebRvGWCE4ARvLbGA==
From: "------t, G--- \(ABC\)" <G------1[at]abci.com>
To: "------t, G--- \(ABC\)" <G------1[at]abci.com>,
	<r--------s[at]insightbb.com>,
	<---me----[at]spamcop.net>,
	<s-------k[at]adelphia.net>
Return-Path: G------1[at]abci.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 10 May 2006 13:49:38.0552 (UTC) FILETIME=[94873F80:01C67438]
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
	boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C67438.946EF0AF"
X-SpamCop-Checked: 222.222.2.222 111.111.11.11 33.3.33.33 44.4.44.41 

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

The sender's address displays as "------t, G--- \(ABC\) " on the webmail Inbox page and gets extra escape characters when I try to reply to it.

Moderator Edit: query is about the header data .. deleted body content here

[Wazoo]

Yep, great mung job. There's no way for me to check anything.

[MyNameHere]

Maybe it isn't worth worrying about. I haven't run into it very often. But I'll try some tests myself and let you know what happens.

Anyway, short of forwarding it to you directly, I don't see a secure way to post an unmunged version of it on a public forum. Even the tracking URL would show the sender's e-mail address and ISP.

Since this is a friend and not a spammer (and it was sent from their work e-mail), I really don't want to do that.

I'm not sure what there is to check. I mean, the problem might be with the IP addresses or the domain names and so on, but I don't think so.

I'm betting that this is a webmail problem (either bad HTML, bad java scri_pt, or error parsing the e-mail address on the webmail's web server). One clue is the fact that the server feels it has to escape the parentheses even in the body of the message. When I first see the address in the in-box, it's:

------t, G--- (ABC) <------1[at]ABCI.com>

but the message source shows

------t, G--- \(ABC\) <------1[at]ABCI.com>

and in the body of the reply it shows single-escaping as well:

Quoting "-------t, G--- \(ABC\)" <------1[at]ABCI.com>:

and the composition window To box double-escapes them:

"------t, G--- \\(ABC\\)" <------1[at]ABCI.com>

So let me check it out a little more and get back to you.

[Wazoo]

Since this is a friend and not a spammer (and it was sent from their work e-mail), I really don't want to do that.

42720[/snapback]

For example, I read what you say, but this doesn't necessarily jive with the headers offered (but again, there's no way to guess from here what was munged, changed, altered ..)

For example, the headers suggest that a "listserv" thing was invoked when the cesmail server received this e-mail. One thought was to backtrack that "listserv" thing, see if there's any evidence of it being hosed ... can't do that with all the bogus IPs, bogus Domains, ....

The first test I'd suggest is to have your friend resend this e-mail exactly the same way, but to another of your e-mail addresses .. see how it arrives/gets handled there ...

[MyNameHere]

The first test I'd suggest is to have your friend resend this e-mail exactly the same way, but to another of your e-mail addresses .. see how it arrives/gets handled there ...

42722[/snapback]

Okay, first, I POPed the offending e-mail to Outlook on my PC and it looked just fine. I replied to it using Outlook and cc'd my SpamCop address and had no problems.

So, I decided to try sending myself (at SpamCop) an e-mail from my work, which also inserts a parenthetical description, like:

"First Last (MCN)" <last_f[at]my.company.name.com>

Then I replied to my work-self from SpamCop and exactly the same thing happened. There was a MAILER-DAEMON failure message just like this morning.

Even better, I found a way to do it all in-house, so you should be able to make it happen at will.

Just pick one of your working e-mail addresses other than SpamCop. Go into the SpamCop webmail Options | Personal Information | Edit your identities. Create a new identity like this:

Identity's name:

Test parentheses

Your full name:

Wazoo (test)

Your From: address:

wazoo[at]my.other.isp.com

Now click the Create button.

Click Compose and select the "Test parentheses" identity from the Identity list. Send the mail to yourself at SpamCop.

When the message arrives, view it in the Webmail inbox and reply to it. You can also cc yourself at SpamCop if you like, just to verify that nothing gets sent. Send the reply and wait a couple of minutes.

You should get a failure notice as I've described.

I found that it is also a problem with [ and ], but not with | / < or >.

Thanks for looking at this issue.

[Wazoo]

Thanks for looking at this issue.

42731[/snapback]

Thanks for the work and the write-up. As I don't have a spamcop.net e-mail acount, I can't work through your example .. however, you should be receiving a CC: of my e-mail to JT for his direct attention. You've identified webmail as the problem area, but I found nothing in the Horde/IMP FAQ that seems to address this directly ... though, in all fariness this could also be caused by the actual e-mail application running there ... I'm going with the safe-HTNL type of stuff being done that's not handling this stuff correctly .. yet, there also seems to be something a but unique about the actual construct of the header lines in question, else there'd be a few more mentions of the issue ...????

[MyNameHere]

Thanks for the work and the write-up.  As I don't have a spamcop.net e-mail acount, I can't work through your example .. however, you should be receiving a CC: of my e-mail to JT for his direct attention.

<snip>

..yet, there also seems to be something a but unique about the actual construct of the header lines in question, else there'd be a few more mentions of the issue ...????

42736[/snapback]

Thanks, Wazoo, I did get the cc.

I, too, wonder why this hasn't come up much. It looks like a fair number of companies create e-mail aliases that include the person's department or branch in parentheses. My friend's does and mine does, anyway. But I almost never get any email from folks at work at such places.

Still, it happened for me when replying to mail sent from three independent sources: my friend's work, my work, and my SpamCop test identity.

Thanks again.