On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 10:28:40AM -0400, Troy Settle wrote:
[ > I wrote: ]
> > On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 09:02:03AM +0200, Leonardo Boselli wrote:
> > > This can vary if the list moderated or not, but there is an
> > > X-eGroups-return header at the very beginning otf the headers, that
> > > conains a code to trace the message and the adressee. It is the one
> > > that is use by yahoo to log bounces.
> > OK, I must be missing something here, but if the return path
> > is not set
> > to some list address then how can yahoo tell that any given user is
> > bouncing? (OK, they can use a hacked mailserver, but in that case, the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > header that Leonardo mentions is worse than useless).
> Uhm, yahoo knows, because I'm telling it so:
Please go ahead and re-read my message, specifically the section I've
helpfully underlined for you.
> 220 psknet.com ESMTP Exim 4.20 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:20:25 -0400
> helo idiotserver.yahoogroups.com
> 250 psknet.com Hello kennedy.psknet.com [63.171.251.9]
> mail from: someuser@???
> 250 OK
> rcpt to: troy@???
> 550-Verification failed for <someuser@???>
> 550-Unrouteable address
> 550 Sender verify failed
> quit
> 221 psknet.com closing connection
That's all very well if you're talking to the primary MX and it knows about
everything that it's going to deliver, but that's not a scalable way of
managing bounces on a list in my experience. It also makes, as I said in
my original message, the header "worse than useless".
> A 550 means that the mail is not going to go through, and yahoo is very
> unforgiving here. Apparently, one hard bounce, and they stop sending
> mail to or accepting mail from that user.
I understand the SMTP protocol very well, thank you very much. In fact I
understand it in enough detail to spot the three deliberate errors in your
SMTP conversation.
In terms of a list, that is a silly strategy, but Yahoo have never been
known for doing the most sensible things. They used (don't know if they
still do, don't really care) to blacklist you if you did too many bogus
RCPT TOs, even if you didn't actually follow it with a full mail transaction,
and just ReSET the connection. They also, at the same time, accepted any
local-part from a non-blacklisted host. This made callbacks to yahoo servers
singularly useless, until you got blacklisted, and then, hey presto! no more
spam!
MBM
--
Matthew Byng-Maddick <mbm@???> http://colondot.net/
