backscatter problem {Scanned by Allteks Mailsafe}

[Simon Jones]

On 28/03/2008, Paul Houselander (SME) <housey at sme-ecom.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Hi all,  anyone help with some good rules to combat backscatter email?
> i seem to have a real problem with this at the moment, mostly bouncing
> back from .ru domains to my customers.  i'm sure a ruleset will help but
> i'm not certain what would >be best, header checks or something in the
> spam rules?
> >
> >thanks
> >
> >SMJ
>
> >>The solutions depends on your MTA, if you are using sendmail check this:
> >>
> >>http://elqui.dcsc.utfsm.cl/util/email/backscatter.html
> >>
> >>And this:
> >>
> >>http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/329.html
> >>
> >>If you are using postfix check this:
> >>
> >>http://www.postfix.org/BACKSCATTER_README.html
> >>
> >>If you have another MTA just google "mta+backscatter" and you'll find
> >>tons of information.
>
> I think most of the suggestions are to use something like milter-ahead to
> reject invalid users, however since the beginning of the week ive been
> seeing more and more backscatter targeted at valid aliases in which case
> recipient verification will not make any difference.
>
> I spent a while yesterday looking at the watermark feature of mailscanner,
> if your customers send their outbound e-mail via a server you control it
> works a treat.
>
> Only problem I can see is it seems to incorrectly flag, read receipts and
> some out of office replies (which I think has been discussed quite a bit
> on
> this list) but I personally think it's a small price to pay for a clean
> inbox!
>
> An alternative that I was using was I use mimedefang as while as
> mailscanner, I wrote a mimedefang filter to reject all bounces for certain
> domains that were being targeted, not really a great ideal as I understand
> it breaks certain RFC's but was the only way I could control mail flow on
> my
> servers.
>
> Good Luck
>
> Paul
>
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Thanks Paul,

mmm, that's the problem isn't it - valid addresses!  I've seen this increase
a LOT this week it's nice to know i've not been the only one.

I think milter-ahead is a sendmail app isn't it?  I used to use that a few
years ago before switching to postfix (it's easier to administer!) I played
around with some of snertsoft's filters back then and they seemed to work
really well.

I'm sure I can crack this with some sort of rule set, anyways I'll keep
plugging away but any comments are really appreciated.
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