On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 02:23:29PM -0600, Jim Ramsay wrote:
> Here's a neat idea that I think would 1) reduce pending queue size 2) 
> Help us find out exactly how often poor innocent bystanders are actually 
> spammed due to spammers forging their email addresses:
> 
> Put a tagged 'bounce' address (like [EMAIL PROTECTED]) 
> in the envelope of outgoing emails.  When TMDA processes this bounce, 
> the email is either deleted from the pending queue (no one will be 
> replying anyway) or somehow marked in the pending queue as failed.
> 
> Would this be possible or a good idea?

I've implemented this feature in qconfirm, and use it successfully for a
mailing list for about one year.  I stopped using it for my main mail
address because the delivery confirmation requests no longer can
reliably be identified as delivery notifications, as they're no more
sent with an empty envelope sender.  Beware, your confirmation request
messages possibly get challenged.

I developed this to reduce the number of double bounces, not to make the
pending queue smaller, though.  And I developed it for qmail only, which
makes it _a lot_ easier.

See http://smarden.org/qconfirm/bounces.html if you are interested.

Some things to consider: Only process bounces created by the local MTA
(confirmation requests that are rejected on SMTP level, this prevents
processing of remote auto-responder messages).  Don't delete the message
after the first bounce, send a confirmation request reminder after some
days, and only remove the message if the address bounces multiple times.

Regards, Gerrit.
-- 
Open projects at http://smarden.org/pape/.
_________________________________________________
tmda-workers mailing list ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://tmda.net/lists/listinfo/tmda-workers

Reply via email to