On Thursday 09 December 2004 00:42, Michael Loftis wrote: > See my just prior response on this thread, most people don't > understand bounces. Yes it could be argued a bounce needs to be > reformatted so the humans can read it easier, but it's not my system > generating the bounce message, I'm just telling the attempter. > Whether it's permanent or temporary doesn't matter.
We reject a huge amount of mail with RBL's. A very small percentage of it is false positive. A very small percentage of those false positives end up as complaints with our help desk. However a significant portion of those who complain are business people, company directors, IT support staff etc, and if they are complaining to us they are either one of our customers or they are transacting with one of our customers. (This does not mean they understand the bounce message). By treating these complaints with a little care we have managed to swing (or keep) a number of large business clients, or at least establish a relationship with them which will ensure they remain our clients for a long while. We have a simple policy for handling RBL related complaints. - If the rejecting list was Spamcop, we whitelist the IP and e-mail the sender to say their mail will be accepted. Spamcop is not an exact science, whitelisting a few bona-fida mail servers is quicker than explaining our motivation for using it in the first place. - For any other list we send a standard messages to the sender and copy to the original intended recipient explaining that their mail is being sent from an open relay. The message has some technical info and links and a suggestion to forward the message to a technically competent administrator. (This involves copy and pasting two e-mail addresses and the IP of listed server into a pre-formated e-mail.) > Answer: find their spammers, and squash them. This puts the support > load on the offender, not on me. Which is where it should be. If > they user sender gets frustrated enough and finally calls us, emails > us via alternate channels (maybe via the recipient) or whatever, People who conduct business with e-mail notice very quickly when their mail disappears into a black hole. They get very frustrated very quickly and are not shy to change ISP's, even if they never understand the problem nor have any idea who is at fault. We have found that a little informed feedback in this situation is very cost effective marketing. But back to the subject. I prefer a 5xx permanent error or that results in an immediate bounce message. Regards Ian -- Ian Forbes ZSD http://www.zsd.co.za Office: +27 21 683-1388 Fax: +27 21 674-1106 Snail Mail: P. O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]