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Re: How to scan bounced mail and detect bounced address

2002-04-08 21:41:45
At 10:17 2002-04-09 +0700, Dapid Candra wrote:
confirmation on registration). So as everybody can predict, we have a lot of invalid addresses that bombing our servers with bounced mails. (Believe me, I've told 'them' about this and the result is our bandwidth is now 4 times wider :( What a solutions!).

Hmm, get them to up MY bandwidth by four fold and I'll seriously consider optimizing your email stuff. :)

Anyway, I have set up procmail rules that capture bounce mail, especially ones with 'invalid user' or 'unknown user' or any kind of that message that tell me the address is invalid. But, I do not know how I can get the invalid address from the bounced mail.

Enough ISPs don't follow a predictable convention that you really can't automate this by scanning the bounces themselves. A LOT of messages will fall through the cracks. Fordwarded accounts will become your bane.

Is anyone have any idea about this? (Advice on how I can convince our directors to use some kind of e-mail validation scenario are also welcome).

Process the list message (not necessarily ALL of them all the time, just one sneaky one every so often) using a process wherein the errors-to and envelope address are both unique to that user's address. When the message bounces, it should come back to that address, and/or the bounce should contain a copy of the previous headers (in most cases), and from that you can determine the bounced subscriber.

sendmail -f listowner+dapidc=karir(_dot_)com(_at_)karir(_dot_)com 
dapidc(_at_)karir(_dot_)com < message

I replace plusses with two ==, and the original @ with one, strip the known listowner tokens and reverse the process to arrive an a the specific address that bounced.
---
 Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering

 Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
 Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies.  I'll get my copy from the list.

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