SORBS a PITA on spam backscatter ...

[Jason Ede]

There are ways, using LDAP lookups, of checking for valid addresses on the MS box... If you search for MailScanner Exchange and LDAP on google it brings up a few howtos.

I've had some success of checking for NDR bounces and then if the destination address is not one of ours then just flag the email as SPAM...

Mind you its probably simpler to use the LDAP lookup to block illegal addresses at the MTA level and just leave it at that.

Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Garry Glendown
Sent: 13 June 2007 19:28
To: MailScanner discussion
Subject: OT: SORBS a PITA on spam backscatter ...

Sorry, this is most likely somewhat off topic, but maybe I could get
some suggestions ...

One of our customers was hit by a presumably larger amount of spam
mails, addressed to mail addresses collected somehow, but with errors in
the addresses (first part of the mail address duplicated, like
"johnjohn at do.main" instead of "john at do.main"). They are operating a
multi-level mail service, with MS on our side, delivering to an SMTP
proxy, then over through a virus scanner, and finally to the actual mail
server (M$ Exchange). Mails are accepted, even by the Exchange server,
which in turn generates a non-delivery receipt for wrong addresses.

For outgoing mail, our central mail server is the smarthost. Which in
turn got listed on SORBS for delivering spam backscatter ... great. As
far as I see it, delivering the mails, which in themselves are generated
in compliance with RFCs, is fully legitimate.

What should we do? We get complaints due to the fact that certain mails
sent from other customers are being blocked on recipient mailservers due
to our server being SORBS-listed ...

I personally do not see any way of identifying whether such a receipt
(if I'm able to even decide that it is a non-delivery receipt) is for
legitimate mails that couldn't be delivered, or for spam.

Any suggestions?

tnx, -garry

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