OT: Question

[Scott Silva]

on 4-2-2009 3:37 PM Rick Cooper spake the following:
>  
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info 
>> [mailto:mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info] On Behalf Of Ken A
>> Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 4:42 PM
>> To: MailScanner discussion
>> Subject: Re: OT: Question
>>
>> Rick Cooper wrote:
>>> Just a query regarding bounces: How many of you actually bounce mail
>>> anymore? I ask this question because I noted a huge number 
>> of rejects on one
>>> of my servers that appear to be valid bounce attempts to an 
>> address of
>>> info at mydomain.com for the last week or so. I have an ACL 
>> that looks at the
>>> local part of recipients and if that local part is being 
>> used it denies the
>>> message (even null sender) with a message stating there is 
>> no such user and
>>> it's an address currently being joe-jobbed. I see the same 
>> ips repeatedly
>>> attempting a bounce for days.
>> I've got one: eqnjahdhx at domain.tld. We host the domain, but of course
>> they don't send the spam. They aren't even aware of it. We are the 
>> joe-jobbed victim. We don't accept the bounces, but they are
>> annoying, and it's been going on for well over a year. I tightened up 
>> the SPF record, but I don't think that helped much. People 
>> who accept, 
>> then bounce mail will eventually learn, or be buried, I 
>> think. The 550 
>> error on this one now says "Please dont bounce forged spam". 
>> That hasn't 
>> helped either. It just takes time.
>>
>> Ken
> 
> [...]
> 
> That is the frustration that I feel. Pick a list having something to do with
> mail, SA, Exim, pretty much any and you will hear people stating what a
> waste of time SPF is but when it comes to something like this I would much
> prefer a DNS txt check over repeatedly trying to send a bounce. And they
> would be miles ahead because they would have never wasted time taking the
> mail. 
> 
> I guess nothing works if you don't use it.
> 
SPF is only a poor method of anti-spam tool. As a tool to control bounces, it
seems to be much better. Another problem with it is many of the server records
are set to softfail (~),pass (+), or neutral (?), instead of fail(-) . Even
the spf wizard that many people used seems to either set softfail or neutral,
and unless you dig in the docs, you wouldn't know any better.

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