On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, John Rudd wrote: > The choices you have (for both spam and viruses) are: > > 0) Do nothing (just let the mail flow and be delivered) > 1) Mark spam or Clean viruses, and Deliver (let the user deal with it via user > initiated filters and practices) > 2) Quarantine > 3) Discard (RFC violation, and generally an irresponsible practice) > 4) Bounce (meaning "accept, and then send back) (also irresponsible) > 5) Reject >
[ ... explanation why options 0 to 4 are a BadThing(tm) to do ] > > That leaves #5. The cost of #5 is that your detection system has to be fast > enough to do the detecting during the SMTP session. Much less impact on > storage and processes (the drawbacks of #2), isn't an RFC violation (#3), and > isn't doing all of the things that are wrong with #4. > > If you have enough speed to keep up with #5, it is the best of the 5 options. Yes in general I would agree with this. But David Koski was talking about a MX host relaying messages for his domain. By rejecting the message you know for sure that you force your MX host to discard or bounce the message; options 3 or 4 are the only options left for the MX host when you reject. So rejecting a message that has been accepted by your MX host is as bad as bouncing or discarding directly at ypur server. And yes, it _is_ in a certain way your problem: that MX host is trying to do you a favor by relaying your mail. It _not_ just some open relay used by a spammer. IMHO nobody should use a MX host if he/she is not willing to accept all messages relayed by that MX host. If you want or need to use a secundairy MX host you better choose a host that can do all filtering you need. You're too late te reject a message if it has been accepted by your MX host. Regards, Kees. -- Kees Theunissen F.O.M.-Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen, Nieuwegein, Netherlands E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tel: (+31|0)306096724, Fax: (+31|0)306031204 _______________________________________________ NOTE: If there is a disclaimer or other legal boilerplate in the above message, it is NULL AND VOID. You may ignore it. Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.roaringpenguin.com MIMEDefang mailing list [email protected] http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
