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Re: designate an email address for testing at any provider

2009-04-02 19:11:35
"Joel Jaeggli" <joelja(_at_)bogus(_dot_)com> wrote:

Nick Levinson wrote:
I think you didn't mean domain. In that case, the catchall address
encourages delivery. I'm looking for a guaranteed bounce, for test
purposes, at any email service provider.

Well know addresses tend to create opportunities for DOS.

Two other issues, such an approach would make it easier to evaluate what criterion a system is using to accept mail, which many people obviously are reluctant to do. Secondly forging to sender produces the opportunity
to DOS a third-party.

+1.
Very very very bad idea to have a guaranteed bounce address.
Back in the days, we could send email loops out by relaying via third parties. That feature was taken out when spammers started using it. There were also bounce servers which you could use to test out your email. There are only a handful remaining (several DKIM test, for example) , and I believe even these are being abused.

Any properly set-up email system will now outright reject email to an unknown recipient. Some don't and are immediately used for back-scattering, and soon enough, end up on the anti-spam block lists. Many places not break the RFCs and do not bounce email back: incorrect recipient goes to a black hole. Last but not least, many bounces now also get caught by anti-spam filters which means that even though your email has bounced, the bounce gets weeded out by the filters.

Email's already become unreliable enough without opening new doors to spammers to make it even worse. If you want to bounce emails back to you, send to a random 12 alphanumeric characters to the left of the address, so no need to a standard bounce address. This is already used by spammers.

Kind regards,

Olivier

--
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
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