[Admin] Make unknown recipient a permanent error?

[Peter Larsen]

hmm - I got this: "The message's content type was not explicitly 
allowed" when trying to send my reply to Tux Admin?


Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> I take it you are supporting making "unknown recipient" a permanent
> failure status.

Nope - I thought I made it clear that I think temporary failure is a 
better method (unfortunately).

> On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Peter Larsen
> <plarsen at famlarsen.homelinux.com> wrote:
> 
>> With temporary the spammer doesn't know if it's a temporary issue or permanent
>> mistake from his perspective.
> 
> AFAICT few spammers care about failures, viz the success of greylisting.

Ahh - I think you misunderstood. It's a measure to lower the number of 
hits your mailserver gets by basically asking the opposide to "delay". 
Spammers rarely send things direct - they send it to "legitimate" 
servers that are open to attack. A permanent faiure will tell a scan of 
your mailserver which accounts are legal. So all in all, I would favor 
not telling the difference between a invalid username in the emnail 
address or just a busy mail server.

>>  This is the same reason you should have a time-delay before rejecting etc.
>> - is to make it harder to send out random mass-mailings.
> 
> That's not really the question I'm asking.  If Tux wants to try to hit
> back at spammers, fine with me; 

That's most likely the reason for the measure to begin with. You don't 
fight spam by simply installing "spamassassin". The idea is to get the 
number of "bad mails" processed down; or you will eventually find 
yourself with a mailserver that doesn't have time to serve you.

 > I've always loved Don Quixote.  However, that issue should be
> discussed  explicitly.  What
> I want to know is if people can think of any reason why "unknown is
> permanent" might hurt
> Tux people.

See above. In extreems it allows harvesting of true email addresses. 
Just like denying access to hosts where IP and DNS doesn't match is a 
measure to lower the amounts of hits/processing your mailserver has to do.

> If it doesn't, then making this change improves service
> to Tux users marginally
> regardless of whether spambots even notice the status code.

How?? What is the improvement you're seeking? In both cases, the sender 
is given a notice that something went wrong. The only difference is, 
that temporary says "I'll try again later".

Regards
   Peter Larsen

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