On 6/10/02, Blake Iverson wrote:

>can we put say, "TW," for before we write the subject title so that when I
>go through and anyone goes through their mail that they can not debate
>whether something is tweeters, or some junk male or even a virus.??

Subject line tags don't work to distinguish where mail comes from, or
what's inside. Anyone, including a worm, can put anything at all into
a subject line, and they do. The current worms often use genuine
subject lines they find lying around. Subject lines tags are worse
than useless--they're actively harmful because too many people think
they mean something and then rely on that. They're a pain in the neck
because they shorten the useful subject line, and they often keep
threads from sorting properly. You can also end up with such edifying
subject lines as "re: tw: re: tw: re: tw"

If you want to tell if mail actually came through a list, look at the
header lines that mean something, not at the subject line. For
Tweeters, the best line to use in a filter is probably the Sender line.
It's rarely forged. For Tweeters, it looks like this:

Sender: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu

Tell your mail client to filter messages containing this to their own
mailbox. if your mail client can't do that, find a better mail client.
Any halfway modern one can. Even some web mail systems have filters.
If hotmail doesn't, well that's one of the many prices you're paying
for 'free' email.

For lists that don't use a Sender: line see if there are
List-something: header lines. There are a group of standard list
header lines that include something like this:

List-Owner: <mailto:tweeters-request at u.washington.edu> (Human contact
for the list)
List-Post: <mailto:tweeters at u.washington.edu>

Both the List-Post: and List-Owner: lines are good for filtering
because they'll rarely change. (The others, such as List-Archive and
List-Help might change if the list owner rearranges things.)

If there's neither a Sender: nor a List-something header, examine the
Received: lines for something regular. The list server name will be in
there somewhere. For tweeters you could look for
lists.u.washington.edu in Received: or even in 'any header'. (This
won't help distinguish well enough if you're zubbed to multiple lists
on the same server though.)

> Just a thought, I think it would
> be very helpful because anything that doesn't have a bird name or
> something
> related to birds, I don't open up because of that very serious virus
> that's going around

Just because there's a bird name, doesn't mean it's not a worm or
virus. If you want to stay safe, use effective precautions, not window
dressing! Effective is filtering list mail properly. Effective is
keeping your anti-viral software up to date *daily*. Effective is
keeping up to date with security patches for all of your software--OS,
browser, mail client. Effective is using a non-microsoft mail client
(try eudora) and a non-microsoft browser (try mozilla or opera).
Effective (and a lot less work) is using linux or a mac :-)
--
Allyn Weaks allyn at tardigrade.net Seattle, WA Sunset zone 5
Pacific NW Native Wildlife Gardening: http://www.tardigrade.org/natives/
"The benefit of even limited monopolies is too doubtful, to be opposed
to that of their general suppression." Thomas Jefferson