[ On Thursday, June 30, 2005 at 10:02:06 (-0500), Rick Cooper wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: [exim] a large number of domains fronted by Exim are refusing bounces...
>
> The use of null, mailer_daemon, etc in the checks for virus bounces is to
> make sure that mails arriving from an individual concerned with someone
> sending them a virus are not dropped offhand. We deal with a top three
> automobile manufacturer and they *regularly* get infections that can result
> in literally thousands of virus laden emails being sent from a single user's
> address book... huge distribution lists on a single user's machine(which is
> wrong in the first place IMHO). I don't want the bounces from automated
> systems of notification to end up cluttering a mailbox just because it came
> from null, and I don't want to block emails from a honest to God human,
> something I can deal with.
So you'd rather reject valid messages that happen to have a null sender
(and maybe whatever other criteria your rules require), and thus cause
loss of e-mail, instead of dealing with the actual problem you're
encountering?!?!?!?!
That's not acceptable in my world, nor is it acceptable to the SMTP
protocol standard.
If you don't want the junk then identify it specifically and as
precisely as you can as junk and reject just the junk. You do not need
to use the presence of a null sender address in your attempt to identify
the junk -- or at least I and many others doing likewise don't.
> Exim's job is not to force admins to do things the author's way...
I'm very well aware of that, given he used to help maintain Smail. :-)
However I've not been talking about the "author's way" here -- but
rather a fundamental requirement written into the protocol standard.
Neither the author nor the users really have any choice if they want to
ensure the product and their use of it will conform as closely as
possible to key requirements in the protocol standard. As others have
so rightly said it's impossible to force the users to behave, but it's
not so hard to make it very difficult for them to misbehave.
> Your point is absolutely valid, taken in the context of normal emails,
> normal circumstance... in other words in general.
Thank you. :-)
> It is not, however, valid
> in all situations, circumstance and needs.
On the contrary: for all those other circumstances there is never any
real need to use the presence of a null sender address in any part of
the process used to identify unwanted junk. This has been demonstrated
time and time again by all those people who deal with the kinds of
problems you describe without ever resorting to use of the null sender
address in their controls. I do fine with Smail. Postfix users get
along fine with what features Postfix offers them. Sendmail users do
fine with what features Sendmail offers them. I don't know how well
qmail users do because I don't dare talk to any of them about e-mail
issues :-) If Exim is so great and so flexible then Exim users should
be able to do better than all the rest of us combined, and still without
having to ever use the null sender address in their controls.
--
Greg A. Woods
H:+1 416 218-0098 W:+1 416 489-5852 x122 VE3TCP RoboHack <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???> Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
