[95828] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Blocking mail from bad places
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas Leavitt)
Thu Apr 5 11:41:45 2007
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:38:37 -0700
From: Thomas Leavitt <thomas@thomasleavitt.org>
To: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <20070404224228.GB20289@hesketh.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
One problem with the "bounce" solution is that for those of us with
multiple domains (some of them wildcarded) mapped to our mailboxes, the
volume of "backscatter" makes it a real hassle to sort out the valid
bounces from the "noise". Even users with a single email address can be
victimized often enough to dismiss this stuff as a form of "spam", and
automatically delete it without looking; \every few months, I get pained
complaints from one friend or family member or another about someone
using their address to spam, and thousands of bounce messages winding up
in their mailbox as a result... another major problem, in my opinion,
caused by spam that is leading to email becoming more and more of an
unreliable medium - even when everything works perfectly according to
protocol and RFC, and a person gets a bounce message because an address
is out of date or typoed or otherwise invalid, they'll never know.
Thomas
Steven Champeon wrote:
> on Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 06:25:18PM -0400, John L wrote:
>
>>>> This technique works great to keep spam out of your mailbox.
>>>>
>>> Inline rejection is a little dangerous for mailing lists
>>>
>> And for anyone else who doesn't feel like jumping through your hoops.
>>
>>
>>> Providing a telephone number in the bounce is an effective way to deal
>>> with false positives.
>>>
>> Only if you assume that everyone who writes to you is so desperate to send
>> you mail that they are willing to make what may be an international call
>> in the middle of the night. I have not found that to be a very realistic
>> assumption.
>>
>
> I have to agree with John here - I've been sending back 'email me at
> postmaster@... if this in an error' for all rejections here since 2003
> or so, and can count the legit mail to postmaster I've received in that
> time on one hand, maybe two; the stuff that gets rejected before the
> accept postmaster default gets a different error, containing a phone
> number. I've never had anyone call me there.
>
> Not that it bothers me much - I've done my part, I figure, and if they
> aren't willing to email a postmaster or call, then <shrug>? What can I
> do?
>
> I'll add that even if everyone were willing to email/call with problems,
> the hideous things that (e.g.) Exchange does to your carefully
> handcrafted rejection errors are enough to cripple the least tech-savvy
> of your likely audience, anyway.
>
>
