Tom Collins writes: > There's also an outstanding request for a "bounce" address using the > qmail bouncesaying program.
Is bouncesaying such a good idea these days? Was it ever? In a few limited cases (this domain has been suspended because they refuse to pay their bills) is a good example of its use, but one you'd not want the domain admin to have control over. In the old days, any mail to a non-existent user was almost certainly a typo and was rare enough that postmaster could handle it. Or it was a hurried guess at a role address or a mailbox that was deleted when somebody left and again postmaster ought to figure out who to forward it to. In the first case bouncesaying had some merit for lazy postmasters and in the other two cases it would be little or no help to anyone since the recipient of the bounce would then mail postmaster about it. These days, most mail to non-existent users is sent by spammers using programs that try random usernames against domains. Bouncesaying looks like a wonderful idea for domain admins - "that will teach those spammers when they get their rubbish back." But it isn't a wonderful idea as far as sysadmins are concerned unless they direct doublebounce mail into a black hole because spammers generally use fake, non-existent addresses. So not only does bouncesaying double the traffic by sending the junk back, it triples it when the other end bounces the bounce. A lot of the mail I wade through is doublebounce mail because our domain admins set "no catch-all" even though we tell them they must have a catch-all. No, you won't stop the double-bounces completely by removing bouncesaying and stopping them setting no catch-all. One particularly inventive user has recently abandoned a mailbox that got nothing but spam by replacing it with an autoresponder. Not only that, he's configured it in such a way that instead of me getting a doublebounce, I get a "looping" error. Users: you can't live with them, you can't chop them into small pieces and flush them down the toilet. -- Paul Allen Softflare Support
