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Re: slow email validation problems (was reject vs bounce)

2005-09-14 03:34:12

Paul Smith writes:
At 09:53 14/09/2005, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
Our fast host rejects most spam, quickly about it, and forwards mail locally via LMTP. The LMTP server may take an awfully long time to accept mail, but that isn't a problem, because we've configured its only client to be generous about timeouts.

But, in effect, that's an 'accept and bounce later' system.

Nope. It rejects about 99.6% of spam messages. The remaining 0.4% are accepted. (Those 0.4% aren't actually bounced in our setup, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend they are.)

Everyone here seems to be saying that's a bad thing :) (faked sender email addresses etc)

Indeed.

Surely, if you're going to be able to reject a message at any time, you should do it at the initial entry point so that faked sender email addresses have less impact.

As long as you reject the vast majority of them at the initial entry point, the rest doesn't matter. It's an annoyance, but not significant. So you can e.g. accept the mail after ten seconds, if you haven't found a reason to accept or reject before then.

Arnt

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