In article <Hw0Cyy.tvJ@wjv.com>, Bill Vermillion <bv@wjv.com> wrote:
>In article <407907a7$0$435$8eec23a@newsreader.tycho.net>,
>John DuBois <spcecdt@deeptht.armory.com> wrote:
>>In article <HvyDBB.1rvv@wjv.com>, Bill Vermillion <bv@wjv.com> wrote:
>>>nouser: /dev/null.
>
>>>Then you can alias the user to 'nouser'
>
>>The problem with this is that all such users will continue to be
>>valid addresses forevermore. Anyone who sends legitimate mail to
>>them will have their mail disappear into a black hole, spammers
>>will send ever more traffic to them, mail generated automatically
>>for those users will go unnoticed, etc. You really want to be
>>able to mark all such addresses as no longer valid.
>Spammers don't seem to pay any attention to anything
>coming back, IF they even see it. So much I see comes from bad
>addresses or forged addresses, that I've taken to throwing away
>anything that's not right. It's not what I'm supposed to do but
>the resources would be strained to the limits if I tried to bounce
>all bad addresses back.
You certainly shouldn't bounce mail except when absolutely unavoidable. If
your only choices are to bounce or drop in a black hole, dropping becomes a
reasonable option. But that should only be the case if you use an MTA that
does not verify addresses at SMTP time (an MTA that is in need of
improvement!), or you have mail for your domain blindly forwarded to you by
another host for some reason - for example, if you're at the end of a UUCP or
other non-SMTP link. It is much preferable for the SMTP servers for a domain
to have knowledge of all addresses at that domain, so that attempts to send
mail to nonexistant addresses can be rejected as soon as RCPT TO: is given.
Unlike bouncing, this has some chance of actually affecting spammer address
databases, and it minimizes resource consumption by preventing messages from
being handed off in the first place. This is the model that all mail transport
must move toward in this spammed age.
John
--
John DuBois
spcecdt@armory.com KC6QKZ/AE
http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/