Remove Bounce Option?

[Julian Field]

Unfortunately there are a lot of sysadmins out there using the bounce 
feature without thinking about the consequences. They fail to see how much 
grief they cause the unsuspecting victims of this setting, and they don't 
see the amount of mail (much of it abusive) that I get on this subject. I 
am partially removing it so that I don't have to waste time and effort 
trying to explain to these users that there is a feature in there which 
people shouldn't use.

I am fed up with the tirade of abusive email I get, and I will take 
whatever steps I deem necessary to reduce that.

I am sure that 0.1% of people could argue a case as to exactly why they 
need it, and why the same thing cannot be achieved in some other way, but 
the other 99.9% will be perfectly happy with its removal.

As an alternative, use "deliver forward spam-responder at your.domain.com". 
Then put a program in the .forward file for "spam-responder" that extracts 
the sender address from the mail and sends out a message to them. That 
shouldn't be too hard to write for sendmail. You could even just write it 
as a "Custom Function" within MailScanner. But don't expect me to write it 
for you :-)

If only everyone was considerate enough to not use the feature, I would 
leave it in. But they're not, and I get the flak it causes.

At 16:18 26/01/2004, you wrote:
>I don't bounce to anyone. I have been on the receiving end of this and know
>first hand what it's like to get these emails-from-spammers flooding my
>network.
>
>But....
>
>If the option is already there, tested and working, why not leave the option
>operational? Mr. Field has mentioned before that he does not want to step on
>the toes of others (i.e. Doing in MailScanner what SpamAssassin already
>does) and I found it a little surprising that the "Bounce" was removed. I
>feel that this is a case of MailScanner doing the job of responsible
>postmasters.
>
>There may be real reasons to bounce, and someone will request this feature
>to be renewed due to this reason, and it will just have to be re-inserted.
>So let's all be responsible, and not use it even if it is there, and let
>that be the end of the debate. We do have a choice to use it or not, you
>know!
>
>Steve Campbell
>campbell at cnpapers.com
>Charleston Newspapers
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Holger Gebhard" <gebhard at EPOST.DE>
>To: <MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK>
>Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 6:32 AM
>Subject: Remove Bounce Option?
>
>
>Hi Julian,
>hi Group,
>
>i don´t think its a good feature to remove the bounce option...
>
>For Example a popular and often used Mailadress, sales at company.com, or
>vertrieb at company.de naturally receive many Spammails...
>
>With MailScanner V4.26 the reciptient must read thousands of "short text
>notification messages" to see whether one Message is falsely trapped as
>Spam.
>
>I think it´s a better way to send a notification (Bounce) to the Sender (I
>know that mostly all Spammers fake their Mailadresses).
>
>When the Sender realy want to send a Message to a protected Reciptient, he
>will send a reply to the Bounce Message (to Admin), or send a new one to
>the Recipient.
>
>In my Company there are many "Novice" Users...
>With the Bounce Option the Users only sometimes ask me why a Message is
>being blocked.
>But when I use the notify Reciptient option, the Users will always ask me
>about every Notification Message... "It could be an important message"
>
>So please don´t remove the Bounce Option!!!!
>
>
>One another Question...
>
>Is it posible to add the "RBL-List Name" where a the Message was trapped to
>the Spamreport.
>
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>Holger

-- 
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support

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