EzMLM email addresses case-sensitive?

[ffurtado]

I noticed that a member subscribed to our email list twice. Once with lowercase letters only and once with upper and lowercase letters (at same domain). My ezMLM list seems to accept *both* addresses because of the caps. Is this normal? Is there any way to prevent this?

Thanks,
Fred

[Terra]

Is this normal?

Not sure, you are the first to report this condition, however I can correlate your findings...

I am not sure if this is -normal- or not, we will have to research the author's intentions to see if there is a unforeseen reason for doing it that way...

Is there any way to prevent this?

Well, that is subjective to what you are doing:

1) bulk injection... You could prewash the list to remove duplicates...

2) piecemeal manual subscription... You would have to test to see if the address was already in the list before subscribing the address

3) email subscription method... There is nothing much you can do here, and it is confirmed that ezMLM will allow dups via this method uniqued to caSE...

In conclusion, we need to dig deeper into this...

--
Terra
--Just add bleach--
FutureQuest

[ffurtado]

Have you found a solution for these ezMLM problems?

1. If you subscribe with XXX@abc.com you can only unsubscribe it by using the same XXX@abc.com. Meaning that, xxx@abc.com, or XxX@abc.com will not unsubscribe the XXX@abc.com email address. Ezmlm just ignores the request.

2. Users can subscribe the same email address more than once if they use mixed case in their email address. So, if a user subscribes with XXX@abc.com and xxx@abc.com, both are accepted by ezMLM and the user receives two copies of the email – one for each address. ezMLM treats them as separate address due to the Caps.

This is very odd behavior! It is a big problem for me because our members who want to "suspend" email for a period of time find they can not do so via our web site.

I think this problem happens because their "Reply To:" email address setting in Outlook or Outlook Express has a different letter case than what they used when they originally subscribed to our list.

A solution for this problem would be welcome!

Thank you,
Fred

[Syneryder]

I noticed this last night as well and can confirm what Fred says. It should probably be changed within the ezMLM core - how could they miss something as important as this? Must be a reason.

In the meantime I'm writing a web-based subscription management script that takes this into account (not to blow my own trumpet or anything). I'll make an announcement when it's ready for release - but hopefully by the time it's done it'll be rendered obsolete

[Bruce]

This request did indeed fall through the cracks. Thanks for the quick reminder.

We have patched ezMLM on all the servers to handle the subscriber list in a case-insensitive fashion. This modification will not break existing subscriber lists, even if the list contains addresses with mixed case.

If you have duplicates on your subscriber list that differ only by the case of the username portion, you may wish to "scrub" the subscriber list as follows:
Code Sample:

ezmlm-list /big/dom/xdom/username/list >my_list xargs ezmlm-unsub /big/dom/xdom/username/list <my_list xargs ezmlm-sub /big/dom/xdom/username/list <my_list

[ffurtado]

Hello Support People,

Thank you very much for your quick fix. It appears to have corrected the problem with multiple subscriptions of a user name with mixed case letters at the *same* domain.

I tried subscribing:

test@mydomain.com
Test@mydomain.com

to my email list. ezMLM accepted the first and not the last as it should.

As a side note I noticed this behavior.

ezMLM response message:

Hi! This is the ezmlm program. I'm managing the
list@mlm.mydomain.com mailing list.

To confirm that you would like

test@mydomain.com

added to this mailing list, please send an empty reply to this address:

list-sc.1040485312.hdljjhjpijkipplbnipe-test=mydomain.com@mlm.mydomain.com

Your mailer should have a Reply feature that uses this address automatically.

This confirmation serves two purposes. First, it verifies that I am able to get mail through to you. Second, it protects you in case someone forges a subscription request in your name.

When I clicked on the URL to confirm and send email, my email client did *not* have test@mydomain.com as the Repy To: address. However, ezMLM accepted the subscription anyway. I was not expecting this at all but maybe that is normal.

I received this message:

Hi! This is the ezmlm program. I'm managing the list@mlm.mydomain.com mailing list.

Acknowledgment: I have added the address test@mydomain.com to this mailing list.

I received similar ezMLM responses message for the 2nd Test@mydomain.com subscription and that address *appeared* to be accepted based on the ezMLM response messages. However, this 2nd address was not added to my email list because of your fix.

I have another ezMLM issue to discuss but I will start a new thread for that.

Thank you very much.
Fred

[Evoir]

Originally posted by Bruce:
If you have duplicates on your subscriber list that differ only by the case of the username portion, you may wish to "scrub" the subscriber list as follows:
Code Sample:

A couple of questions about scrubbing a list.

Do I replace the my_list with the list name?
Do I just type this in uning telnet or whatever?
Will these command also force the list to be all lowercase?

I'm having occasional trouble with this because I am using Kohan's Webscriber script, and it forces everything lower case. Some people who were put in as mixed case have trouble unsubscribing. This is the only instance where folks have trouble unsubscribing. I'd like to scrub all my lists, but am afraid of messing them up.

Thanks,
Evie

[sheila]

Originally posted by Evoir:
A couple of questions about scrubbing a list.

Do I replace the my_list with the list name?

Actually, the use of "my_list" in the example above by Bruce is only as the name of a text file where the names of all the subscribers are temporarily saved. You could call it whatever you like, as long as it is not identical to any other file in your directory, as using the name of an existing file would cause it to be overwritten. So, for example, you could replace my_list with subscriberfile.txt or whatever you like.

Do I just type this in uning telnet or whatever?

Yes.

Will these command also force the list to be all lowercase?

Yes. What it effectively does is:
1) First command exports your current subscriber list to a text file. my_list or whatever you call the file.
2) Second command unsubscribes your entire list. Since you have just dumped an exact copy of your list to the text file, using that file to unsub everyone should work and after you have completed step #2, there should be no one subscribed to your list.
3) Resubscribes everyone, using the same list. HOWEVER, since the case-sensitive bug has been fixed, re-subscribing everyone will automatically force all the email addresses to be lowercase, thus solving the problems you are currently experiencing. It sounds like this is a long time list you have had for a while, probably started before this bug was fixed, thus causing the problem for you.

I'm having occasional trouble with this because I am using Kohan's Webscriber script, and it forces everything lower case. Some people who were put in as mixed case have trouble unsubscribing. This is the only instance where folks have trouble unsubscribing. I'd like to scrub all my lists, but am afraid of messing them up.

Using the above commands exactly as shown in telnet should work for you.
The first one is the key.
After executing the first command, you may want to "peek" into the text file you have created by dumping the list to the file, and ensure that it IS in fact your list of subscribers before proceeding on to steps #2 and #3. Providing you do step #1 correctly, you should be in good shape.

[Evoir]

Sheila,

Thanks for the great explaination. I just ran all three lines (replacing it with the correct domain infomation) and when I then go to the CNC and look at the list, I still see some that have mixed case letters in it.

[sheila]

Hey, Evie, after additional consulation with our email guru, it appears that I mispoke on the actual mechanics of the email storage above.

Apparently the email addresses are stored mixed-case as they are submitted. However, when a new email address requests to be subscribed, it is compared against the previous email addresses, and this comparison is a case-insensitive comparison that uses a lower-case form.

So, it is normal to see mixed case email addresses on the list. However, you should NOT see any duplicate email addreses that differ only by case. Also, subscribers should not have a problem unsubscribing if they submit their email address in a different case than the one that is listed as subscribed.

I hope this clarifies what is actually going on...