Author: W B Hacker Date: To: exim users Subject: Re: [exim] Email for people who are no longer here. (WAS email goes
awry)
Sherwood Botsford wrote:
> Ian Eiloart wrote:
>
>>
>>--On 25 August 2006 17:26:06 -0600 Sherwood Botsford
>><sbotsford@???> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Once a
>>>week or so, I go through this, adding some names to the blackhole
>>>list. (As a school we have a high turnover. I forward for a year
>>>after they leave, then junk anything else.)
>>
>>Don't do that - reject it. Otherwise people will think they're being
>>ignored. Important notifications could go missing, and your school could
>>-in some rare circumstances- find itself in legal hot water. Legal
>>notifications that are rejected by your server are not considered
>>delivered. Notifications that are black-holed can in some arbitration
>>cases be considered proper legal notification.
>>
>
>
> We are on a satellite link, with a variable IP address. Our
> conditions of use prohibit running any server on our end of the
> link.
> I have an ISP cache our email, and use fetchmail to pick it up
> every 5 minutes. Once here, fetchmail funnels it to exim.
>
> If exim rejects email, fetchmail regards it as undeliverd, and
> doesn't delete it from the server, so next time it's there, like
> a bad penny.
>
> I suppose the best thing to do would be to set up a separate
> transport for "people who used to be here" and set it up so that
> exim would make one attempt to respond, saying "You recently sent
> email to a user who is no longer here." If the transport failed,
> it would log something and never try again.
>
> Almost all of this email is spam. Real people know the person's
> new address. I don't see much point in wasting my bandwidth
> trying to send mail to mostly non-existent addresses.
>
> Thoughts.
>
If traffic load/link costs justify it, alternatives are to:
- migrate to a more customizable mail service provider instead of the 'one-size
fits all' connectivity-provider's MTA. Not (necessarily) an Exim issue.
- run your own Exim MTA on the 'terrestrial' side of the internet so you have
full control of rulesets, filtering, response messages.
A dedicated leased/owned box with 'root' access, fixed-IP, PTR record, in a
'proper' data center is what you will need.
Cheaper than your bar or gasoline bill, but only if you are an alcoholic with an
SUV....
