From: Reindl Harald Sent: November 5, 2014 01:22
Am 05.11.2014 um 02:07 schrieb Hugh E Cruickshank:
From: John R Pierce Sent: November 4, 2014 16:53
On 11/4/2014 4:49 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank wrote:
We are looking for a way to automate the handling of
bounced emails.
what do you want to do DO with these bounced mails?
Our application software generates emails on behalf of our clients. Currently I have to manually processes any bounce messages
which is a
real waste of my time. I would like to be able to intercept
the bounce
messages and provide a summary of these to our application
which could
then notify the appropriate client (or at the very least
make a note of
the bounce)
just parse the *maillog* instead
That would only be effective for bounce messages that were generated by our mail server (in the case of messages that were immediately rejected by the foreign mail server when our mail server attempted to hand the messages off). It would not work for messages that were initially accepted for delivery but were subsequently returned as being non-deliverable.
It is on my list of "things to do" to extract the maillog entries for any application generated emails. We currently log the dialog between our application and our email server when delivery of the message is initiated however we are missing the handoff from our mail server to the foreign mail server. The maillog information would then be recorded in our database for use by our support staff and possibly client staff (although the client access part is still under consideration).
Regards, Hugh
On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 3:55 AM, Hugh E Cruickshank hugh@forsoft.com wrote:
just parse the *maillog* instead
That would only be effective for bounce messages that were generated by our mail server (in the case of messages that were immediately rejected by the foreign mail server when our mail server attempted to hand the messages off). It would not work for messages that were initially accepted for delivery but were subsequently returned as being non-deliverable.
Are there still servers that accept undeliverable mail and generate messages later? That behavior makes them an easy target for spammers who send the real target address as the From: entry and will likely get them blacklisted.
It is on my list of "things to do" to extract the maillog entries for any application generated emails.
I'd expect the bulk of failures to be there, but your own server should generate and deliver the bounce along with logging it.
On Wed, November 5, 2014 7:39 am, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 3:55 AM, Hugh E Cruickshank hugh@forsoft.com wrote:
just parse the *maillog* instead
That would only be effective for bounce messages that were generated by our mail server (in the case of messages that were immediately rejected by the foreign mail server when our mail server attempted to hand the messages off). It would not work for messages that were initially accepted for delivery but were subsequently returned as being non-deliverable.
Are there still servers that accept undeliverable mail and generate messages later? That behavior makes them an easy target for spammers who send the real target address as the From: entry and will likely get them blacklisted.
Indeed, there are, and this sort of spam is called "backscatter". No need to mention that like almost everybody else I have my servers configured so that before deciding to accept message for delivery the server queries next server if further forwarding is involved, and depending on answer (deliverable/not deliverable) accepts or rejects message. This way we, even when handling forwards, will not become source of backscatter. I do have do make exemptions and if next server "lies" (says deliverable, then when message is passed to it it is accepted, but later server sends non delivery response), then I never let forwarding to these servers/domains. Even for real users who moved there. Period. I had an interesting comment from my friend about one of my exceptions. This exception is gmail.com (who at least at some point were accepting everything, then were sending you message: "user doesn't exist"). His comment was: hey, they are in business of collecting information. Of course they accept everything. And once they have the information, then they treat it as an e-mail message ;-)
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
From: Les Mikesell Sent: November 5, 2014 05:40
Are there still servers that accept undeliverable mail and generate messages later? That behavior makes them an easy target for spammers who send the real target address as the From: entry and will likely get them blacklisted.
There definitely are judging by the number of bounce messages we receive hours and sometimes days later for messages that have not been queued in our mail server.
Regards, Hugh
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Hugh E Cruickshank -
Les Mikesell -
Valeri Galtsev