On Tue, 1 Oct 2002, Tom Marazita wrote:
> 2) The MAIL FROM:<> can itself fail, which indicates the host at the
> other end has a poorly configured mailer; or at least
> that's what it seems to have indicated with the hosts I've
> come up against recently. The sender might still
> actually be valid though, and in that case I might still want
> to accept the message even if I can't verify it due to their not
> accepting the bounce.
I personally take the hard line on this issue. We should make life
difficult for the users of MTAs that are unable to accept bounce
messages. That way, those users might put enough pressure on their
sysadmins to fix their MTAs.
Nevertheless, I realise that some people come under political pressure
to break the rules. I am prepared to contemplate some kind of scheme
(details as yet unknown because I haven't thought about it) by which you
can say "if callout fails because MAIL was rejected, still accept the
message". What I do not think is a good idea is using something other
than <> in the MAIL command.
> I've come up against about half dozen of these in the past
> six months; in all cases the sender would have been a valid
> address but we rejected the message. Naturally I have contacted
> their postmasters, but with very little response.
Did you contact the senders to tell them they are using a system that
doesn't accept bounces?
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
