Re: [Exim] opinion on unconditional accept for postmaster

> On Tuesday 10 December 2002 09:40, Giuliano Gavazzi wrote:
> > Does this comment imply that it is not compulsory to accept every
> > email addressed to postmaster, in particular when it smells like
spam
> > like the following:
>
> Personally I believe that mail addressed to postmaster *must* be
> accepted and *must* be read. That's arguably a little too strict for
> personal domains though.
>

I've seen the same problem. After a over a year of operation, I have so
far received ZERO legitimate emails to "postmaster," but quite a number
of spams. I still accept all emails addressed to "postmaster" for any
of my local domains. They all get sent to my inbox, since I am arguably
the postmaster for all the domains I am hosting. Then I delete them by
hand, as soon as I verify they are spam. It's not a huge problem. But
it is annoying.

Interestingly, most of it is addressed to a just a small subset of my
customer's domains. Most of the domains, including my own, don't get
hit this way too often. I wonder why?

I've considered not accepting anything addressed to postmaster at any of
the hosted domains that are not my own, but rejected that as too outside
accepted RFC norms. I've also considered redirecting it to the owner of
each hosted domain, but rejected that idea as (a) mean to my customers,
and (b) pointless, since they would probably turn around and forward any
"real" postmaster mail to me anyway. Why force my beloved customers to
act as my personal spam filter?

So far, I've just decided to live with it. But I can see where a larger
operation might need something at least partially automated to filter
out spam sent to "postmaster."

.Is anyone out there doing something along these lines, that could share
their technique?

Would it violate the RFC to apply RBL blocking first, before accepting
stuff for postmaster? Seems like that would block a lot of it, but
might also violate the intent of the RFC. For one thing, it would
prevent someone, who is black-listed but shouldn't be, from being able
to contact a postmaster to let them know they are being blocked. The
same argument applies to pretty much any anti-spam measures, not just
RBLs. Hmmm...

You know what? I REALLY dislike spammers. Sigh.

Jim Roberts
Punster Productions, Inc.