On Sat, Nov 16, 2002 at 12:00:17PM -0600, Gerald V. Livingston II wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Nov 2002 10:45:09 -0500
> "Edward Guldemond" <thedebategod@yifan.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Nov 16, 2002 at 02:48:53AM -0600, Gerald V. Livingston II
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Many ISP's do not bounce mail sent to addresses that do not exist
> > > because robot software can use that info to build a database of
> > > valid addresses at that domain for spamming purposes.
> >
> > Doesn't this break RFC 822? I would think that a mail server should
> > bounce mail for addresses that do not exist anyway for the reasons you
> > mentioned. Oh well, that's what they get for running their mail
> > machines on Windows NT/2000...
>
> Yes, it breaks 822. But it's slowly becoming necessary for smaller
> operations.
I am not somebody that likes spam, but there's an easy solution to all
of this. Get an MTA that sets limits to the ammount of mail that it
will process. For example, have it only process 50 mails in an hour
from each host and keep the rest in a queue. Don't bounce the other
addresses until later. Surely, if you're keeping tabs on a server, an
hour is more than adequate to block people out and clear out all of
the crap in the queue. This won't work on a large scale though,
especially nation-wide ISPs with all of the AOL HTML mail that flows
all over the place.
Note: I don't know if such a thing exists, but for smaller sites,
this would be a godsend.
Just my two cents,
--
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Edward Guldemond
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