[CentOS] Bounced email processing

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Wed Nov 5 17:01:44 UTC 2014


On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 10:06 AM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 3:55 AM, Hugh E Cruickshank <hugh at forsoft.com>
>> wrote:
> <snip>
>> 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.
> <snip>
> Huh. Given that my email address was harvested by someone(s), and the last
> year or less, I'll suddenly get a bunch of bounces from Australia, or
> Italy, or Estonia... now you've got me wondering if someone's just using
> my email, or is attacking me, personally....

I once ran qmail as shipped in SME server (before they replaced the
receiving component) and it would routinely get hit by dictionary
attacks - which it would accept and then fall over as it filled its
outbound queue with bounces.   That list of 'accepted' email addresses
must have been sold and reused for years because the affected domain
continued to get about 50k/day of emails to those non-existing users
until the domain name was retired (for other reasons).  I switched it
to sendmail with a virtual user table for the few real user names so
it was able to reject the bad names almost instantly.

So, based on that, I'd guess you are on some of those lists that still get used.


> Btw, when Karanbir first banned me, he wrote me one email. I responded...
> and he didn't, nor has he contacted me in any way. In that email, btw, he
> said that he'd talked to me before about my "behavior". Now, other than
> the arguments about nixspam, I can't remember any such thing, and now,
> even though I was saying he was wrongheaded about using them, I feel as
> though he took it as a personal attack, and that my banning is personal,
> on "his" (as opposed to "our") list....

Well, you did mention something that could be construed as violent -
by someone with a complete lack of a sense of humor.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com



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