At 12:39 2005-01-25 +1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> You've ACCEPTED the entire message by the time procmail sees it.
This is the politically correct and infuriating reason to never send
bounces from procmail. Although it is an extremely bad idea to bounce
spam for the aformentioned reasons, I can think of other good uses for
generating bounces:
* Let someone I know know I don't want to talk to them without being too
rude. (sorry about the grammar ;)
I've found that even asking people to not CC one on list posts (for a lot
of legit reasons, nevermind that it's MY inbox they're sending things to)
raises ire with some people. Telling someone you're not interested in
hearing from them isn't going to come off as anything other than rude to
them. Accept it - ditch the messages.
* I don't want to receive email from a certain group of people at *this*
email address. It's impossible to educate the clueless other than the
hard way.
Heh, that rather describes some of my family members.
This if course is a wholly different type of bounce. Mailing lists I
administer have informational bounces - your message was a forward of a
digest posting, or you posted in HTML, etc. Inform the user so that they
can take corrective action.
* I'm trying to get off a mailing list, the unsubscribe is broken and
the owner is obnoxious by doing nothing about it.
I'd call this a rarity, but if you don't have configuration control over
the MTA (i.e. you're a lowly user on a host administered by someone else
who won't give you the time of day), then set up a forward to the
return-path or listowner address (just make sure it isn't a list submission
address, because that'd be incredibly rude to the other users of the list,
and if it comes out that you're a retard who couldn't find the unsub
instructions they include in a link in the messages, you're going to be a
serious ass).
* Minor chance that some business whos mailings I no longer want reacts
to bounces instead of polite requests. Hey it's also much faster to
bounce than to send a personal email requesting removal. If they're
any good, removal is automatic.
Try reading the manpages or searching the list archives for "EXITCODE"
# Standard EXIT codes (but check the docs specific to your chosen MTA):
#
# EX_USAGE 64
# EX_DATAERR 65
# EX_NOINPUT 66
# EX_NOUSER 67
# EX_UNAVAILABLE 69
# EX_OSERR 71
# EX_OSFILE 72
# EX_CANTCREAT 73
# EX_IOERR 74
# EX_TEMPFAIL 75
# EX_NOPERM 77
EXITCODE=67 followed by unsetting HOST would cause your MTA to treat the
message as a NOUSER. It'll not be exactly the same as a regular nouser
bounce, but the situations you're citing sound like you're dealing with
morons anyway, so the little differences are not likely to be significant
to them.
Unfortunately the procmail community is rather hostile to this idea and no
ready-made bounce recipes are available so I made my own. I haven't
released it because so far it's only a quick'n'dirty job which would need
too much adaptation.
Some people believe that it's wrong to pollute. Be it the wilderness, the
public roadways, a parking lot -- or the internet. Sending bounces in
response to spam is sort of like taking the trash someone left on your car
windshield and throwing it out on the street - you're not putting it into
the mailbox of the actual spammer, you're just polluting the net everyone
else is trying to enjoy or otherwise make use of. In such cases, it's
better to just stuff it into the trash -- unless you can tell off the guy
holding a stack of them wandering around the parking lot and mangling
windshield wipers as he crams them on cars.
Sending informational _autoreplies_ to messages from recognizeable sources
is a different matter.
If you're looking for something for mail admins to be hostile about, you
should check out what Verizon has decided to do (blocking mail from
European sources, AND performing SMTP callbacks).
---
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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