If this is truly interfering with normal mail delivery to the point that
you can notice it - a quick, global solution would be to add a
.qmail-default file for your domain, and let it deliver to /dev/null.
Any delivery to an address that no longer exists (or ever did in the
first place) will quietly discard the message, and you'll save yourself a
bounce.
Of course, that's really not a very good solution, since it perma-squashes
bounces that 99.9% of the free world would probably want to see.
Any mailing list manager that doesn't auto unsubscribe dead addresses needs
taken out of service and buried six feet under. Mail their abuse dept and
shout.
--
Mahlon Smith
InternetCDS
http://www.internetcds.com
> I have a growing problem. My mail servers spend a good portion of their day
> sending bounce messages where ex-customers have signed up for a mailing
> list, but now no longer have an account with me. For example,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribes to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list. Some time
> later, user "a" cancels his/her account. However, joke-of the-day continues
> to send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for MONTHS even though my mail server
> correctly responds with the '550 User does not exist' error message. My
> server then also sends a full bounce message.
>
> Is there some way to stop this? It is getting to the point where the bounce
> messages are taking up MUCH, MUCH more bandwidth than the "real" email, and
> is even causing noticable delays in delivery times of "real" email to
> external addresses.
>
> I'm using qmail-1.03 on linux-2.2.12smp.
>
> I'm crossposting this on isp-tech and qmail mailing lists. Please respond
> personally.
>
> Eric Calvert
> Caveland Connection
