Changing Precedence to junk

[Mike Kercher]

Mailman uses the precedence of either Bulk or List...can't remember which.  My
question is this...WHY would you bounce spam?  The large percentage of spam you
bounce more than likey comes from forged addresses.  Therefore, attempting to
bounce them just generates more useless traffic on the net and your boxen (IMHO
of course).

Mike


> -----Original Message-----
> From: MailScanner mailing list
> [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf Of Jeff A. Earickson
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 8:45 AM
> To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Changing Precedence to junk
>
>
> Y'all,
>
> It would be good if the mailscanner virus warning messages
> went out as 'Precedence: bulk'.  I'm getting to the point
> where I don't care if mailscanner sends out the warning
> messages at all -- most go to the wrong person and are
> useless.  Whenever we write web-based email apps that
> generate email, we always stick the 'Precedence: bulk' stuff
> into the mailer scripts, to cut down on bounced emails.
>
> --- Jeff Earickson
>
> On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, John Ireland wrote:
>
> > Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 12:36:18 +0100
> > From: John Ireland <J.Ireland at HGU.MRC.AC.UK>
> > Reply-To: MailScanner mailing list <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
> > To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> > Subject: Changing  Precedence to junk
> >
> > I spoke to Julian about this last week at at the JANET-CERT
> meeting in
> > London and I thought I would mail the list to see what
> others thought
> > of the idea.
> >
> > Our mail queue is continually filled with auto responder
> mail replying
> > to spam messages.  These messages either time out or
> bounce, spamming
> > the user with more useless information.
> >
> > Most auto responders, such as vacation, will not respond to
> mail with
> > the 'Precedence: bulk' or 'Precedence: junk' line is
> included in the
> > header.  So giving mailscanner the option of changing the
> > 'Precedence:' header to junk would give a simple centrally managed
> > solution.
> >
> > I know there are other solutions - ban auto responders,  write a
> > procmail wrapper for vacation, or hack the vacation code.
> But there
> > are users that need to use auto responders and there are auto
> > responders over which the mail administrator has no control.
> >
> > Also, I know of no other program, other than 'vacation',
> that uses the
> > 'Precedence:' header.
> >
> >
> > --
> > John Ireland                      Email:
> mailto:J.Ireland at hgu.mrc.ac.uk
> > MRC Human Genetics Unit
>      Tel. : +44-31-332-2471
> > Western General Hospital          Fax. : +44-31-343-2620
> > Edinburgh, EH4 2XU, UK            WWW  : http://www.hgu.mrc.ac.uk
> >
>