>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Lightfoot <chris@???> writes:
Chris> Generally speaking I don't think that mail server
Chris> administrators, who I guess are the main audience of this
Chris> list, should be putting any effort into making email less
Chris> reliable.
The reliability of my email is adversely impacted when 200,000 other
mailservers all try and send me bounces for mail I never sent (plus
of course C/Rs, sender verification callouts, and other abusive
practices), pegging my inbound concurrent SMTP connections limit for
several days processing over 30 million transactions (which is about
four decimal orders of magnitude over the server's normal load, and
five orders over its normal _legitimate_ mail load).
The only solution in the face of this kind of onslaught is to educate,
whether politely or by means of the Wire Brush of Enlightenment, the
idiots who do accept-and-bounce or C/R or whatnot. I certainly
wouldn't advocate merely blocking bounces from sites that generate
excessive backscatter; the right approach is to block _all_ mail from
such sites (with a suitably explanatory error message) until they fix
their antisocial configuration.
Chris> Spammers, virus authors, Microsoft etc. are already working
Chris> hard on this project and I do not think they need any
Chris> assistance.
Bounce blowback is in fact assisting the spammers and virus authors in
decreasing the reliability of mail.
--
Andrew, Supernews
http://www.supernews.com
