Reject vs. bounce

[Tim Boyer]

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 20:57:21 -0700, Ken <ka at pacific.net> wrote:

>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

That's what I'm doing now, in the smtp transaction, using the MIMEDefang milter
- running all my SpamAssassin tests there.  My fear is that if I move them from
there to a post-smtp scan, I'll lose the ability to reject.

For instance, we once got a legitimate sales request that scored over 19 on SA.
/dev/null fodder if ever there was one, but because I reject with a 'email
postmaster if you're real' message, they re-sent and it got through.  If I scan
afterwards, my only real options are discard it or tag it and do something with
it, right?

-- 
tim boyer
tim at denmantire.com