Jacob Fugal
11/28/2006 2:38:00 PM
On 11/27/06, Trans <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory Brown wrote:
> > When I post to RubyTalk, I've been getting a 'your photo upload
> > failed' message from flickr.
> >
> > Weird! Anyone else seeing this?
>
> Yes. And I've already contactee them. This is waht they said:
>
> Hello,
>
> Flickr allows its users to upload photos via email to a
> secret email address tied to their account. These can be
> uploads from a cameraphone or other device, or a script, or
> a regular ol' email client. When we encounter problems with
> the upload, we respond back to the email address that the
> upload was sent from to let them know. In this case, the
> email appeared to be from a mailing list you are a member
> of, so the error response got sent there. I've added the
> address of your mailing list to our block list to make sure
> this doesn't happen again, and gotten in touch with the user
> involved to try and figure out if these upload attempts were
> done on purpose or not.
>
> Thanks for your report.
>
> Cheers,
> Myles
Their diagnosis is close, but not correct. And it's far enough from
the real case that their block isn't working.
What happened is not that the list address got set as the "secret
email" -- if this had been the case the *whole list* would get the
"upload failed" message any time *anyone* posted to the list. You can
imagine the flood that would cause.
Instead, someone (let's call him Bob) subscribed their "secret email"
to the list. When Alice sends an email to the list, that email is
passed on to all recipients, including Bob's secret email. This
triggers a file upload attempt, which of course fails, and the
response is sent to Alice because it was her email that triggered it.
This fits the symptoms that I've seen and read about.
Blocking the list address won't do any good because the emails are
addressed *to* the list, not *from* the list -- the email message
forwarded by the list retains the "From:" header of the original
author.
What we need to do is just remove the subscription for
"effective53person@photos.flickr.com" from the mailing list.
Jacob Fugal
P.S. This is the same diagnosis Chris Carter came up with in
[ruby-talk:226395], so don't give me all (or even much of) the credit.