Reject vs. bounce

[Ken]

Tim Boyer wrote:
> Apologies if this has been discussed ad infinitum before.  I've been running a
> mailserver since 1996, but just heard about MailScanner Saturday, thanks to
> Steve Swaney's excellent talk at the Ohio LinuxFest.
>
> I've been using DNSBLs and a private blocklist with SpamAssassin, and ClamAV as
> milters, so when I reject an email it's rejected, not bounced back to the
> (99.999% bogus) 'From" address.  
>
> I've heard and read that MailScanner has a 'bounce' option.  Is this what I
> think it is - a bounce back to the 'From'?  Or is it a reject before the
> connection's been dropped and the email accepted?
>
>   
The 'Feature' is pretty much useless, as has been mentioned here many 
times.
I'd only add that you can do both what you are doing now AND run 
MailScanner to further process your mail using more aggressive 
spamassassin rulesets. Because MailScanner queues and scans mail with a 
perl process that uses the spamassassin perl api, you can run tons of SA 
rules, rbl and uribl tests, plugins and virus scanners as long as you 
dedicate sufficient resources to the process. It's much more than you 
can do in an smtp transaction. Most users here combine the fast milters 
doing some rejections, with MailScanner & SpamAssassin doing the heavy 
work.
Ken Anderson
Pacific.Net