Re: Proper procedure for bounced mails?

["Jens Knoell" <jens@ing.twinwave.net>]

From: "James" <james@piku.org.uk>
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 02:29:59AM -0600, Jens Knoell wrote:
> | It's probably somewhat OT - is there an established procedure for
bouncing
> | mails? Special headers and the like? A net search wasn't exactly
helpful...
> | does anyone know a good resource to read up on that?
>
> How and why do you want to bounce email?

How: from a custom, not-yet-totally-finished script that is supposed to
filter all incoming mail based on certain per-user conditions in an SQL
database.

The idea is to bounce mails only once per sender per day. So far, I've been
using "custom" reply mails, as well as informing the recipient by sending
them some tiny email. So far so good - but I'd like to re-format the reply
mails to be a little more compliant to standards (if there are any for such
things).

> Sendmail and friends automatically bounce mail if the recipient address
> is unknown. I don't recommend bouncing spam as the sender address is
> likely to be fake and you could accidentally mailbomb someone innocent.

Correct. That's why I'd like to make sure the bounces are somewhat
conforming to standard formats. On the other hand, bouncing spam does get
people off spamlists - yet I can't just pretend that the user doesn't exist,
as that will confuse the rare legit sender whose mail gets rejected for one
reason or another.
Unconditionally dropping them doesn't get people off spamlists either
(tested that in lengthy experiments). To prevent mailbombing, I'd rather
like to use a "warn once per day" filter on my side.

> And it's probably not OT if you're using Linux mail servers ;-)

*G* I am using sendmail, and started off with the old AMaViS mailfilter...
by now it's not AMaViS anymore, but yes, it's Linux+sendmail+mySQL+... all
the way :)

Before anyone asks: The script isn't ready for prime time yet (too
site-specific, lots of things hardcoded, still a few critical bugs), but I
am considering to wrap it up and release it someday, although probably not
in the near future - it is too embarrassing at the moment ;)

Jens