Reject vs. bounce

[Dennis Willson]

Actually what I do is; a lot of smtp rejections for different 
criteria, then I use MailScanner with SpamAssassin and ClamAV for the 
email that gets through the smtp phase. If the email scores high with 
SpamAssassin then I quarantine the email. Each night at midnight each 
user gets one email with a list of senders and subjects of the email 
that were quarantined that day and it includes a link to release it if 
they see from the sender and/or subject it's something they want. 
After 7 days the quarantined email is deleted from the quarantine.

On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:21:29 -0400
  Tim Boyer <tim at denmantire.com> wrote:
>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
>
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--------------------------------------------------
Dennis Willson

taz at taz-mania.com
http://www.taz-mania.com

Ham: ka6lsw
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Owner: Kepnet Internet Services

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