Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

["Steven W. Orr" <st...@syslang.net>]

Recently I have been getting phone calls that friends have been getting 
their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like crazy 
but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by spamass-milter.

Anyone else getting this?

-- 
Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have  .0.
happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0
Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000
individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
steveo at syslang.net

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[Keith Ivey <kc...@cpcug.org>]

Neil Watson wrote:

> Rejecting spam is not a good idea.  Most of the time you end up spamming
> some poor sod who has been joe-jobbed.  Discard spam.  Don't add the to
> problem.

The problem with discarding is that in situations like the one 
described the sender will have no idea the mail was not received.

There's little problem with rejecting, as opposed to bouncing, 
messages that you think are spam.  That means doing it during 
the SMTP session, before you accept the message.  It will not 
usually result in messages to a joe-job victim, since spammers 
will not send bounces in response to a rejection.

-- 
Keith C. Ivey <kc...@cpcug.org>
Washington, DC

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[Matt Kettler <mk...@comcast.net>]

At 10:44 AM 4/15/2005, Neil Watson wrote:
>On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 10:24:47AM -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote:
>>their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like 
>>crazy but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by spamass-milter.
>
>Rejecting spam is not a good idea.  Most of the time you end up spamming
>some poor sod who has been joe-jobbed.  Discard spam.  Don't add the to
>problem.

Rejecting spam is fine Neil.. It's bouncing that's bad.

Rejecting = 550 at the SMTP layer.

Bouncing = generating a post-delivery bounce.

If you reject, it goes back to the joe job victim from the abused relay. No 
big deal there, the victim can just block the abused relay without concerns 
for collateral damage. Odds are very good he's going to have to block this 
server anyway, as it's going to be generating thousands of undeliverable 
errors anyway.

If you bounce, it goes back to the victim from your server. This is tough 
for the victim to deal with, because there could be thousands of servers 
doing this. Blocking all of them is time consuming.

It's basically the difference between trying to block a DoS attack that's 
coming from one source, vs blocking a DDoS attack coming from many. DoS is 
easy to deal with, DDoS, not so easy.

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[alan premselaar <al...@12inch.com>]

Rick Macdougall wrote:
> 
> 
> Neil Watson wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 10:24:47AM -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote:
>>
>>> their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like 
>>> crazy but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by 
>>> spamass-milter.
>>
>>
>>
>> Rejecting spam is not a good idea.  Most of the time you end up spamming
>> some poor sod who has been joe-jobbed.  Discard spam.  Don't add the to
>> problem.
>>
> 
> Hi,
> 
> While this has been discussed before, I don't think rejecting spam at 
> the smtp level is a bad idea, ie 551 - We think this is spam.  How ever, 
> bouncing spam after the smtp acceptance is a bad idea.
> 
> Since most spam is coming either from infected PC's or spammers dsl 
> connections, rejecting at the smtp level is usually not a bad idea.  It 
> also allows for legitimate email that is marked as spam to be returned 
> to the owner, if you just make spam vanish to /dev/null you may find you 
> have some very unhappy clients further down the road who are wondering 
> where that letter from the Legal department is.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Rick

Not only that, but if Steve had been discarding spam, neither he nor his 
friends would have been aware of this problem.

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[Rick Macdougall <ri...@nougen.com>]

Neil Watson wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 10:24:47AM -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote:
> 
>> their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like 
>> crazy but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by 
>> spamass-milter.
> 
> 
> Rejecting spam is not a good idea.  Most of the time you end up spamming
> some poor sod who has been joe-jobbed.  Discard spam.  Don't add the to
> problem.
> 

Hi,

While this has been discussed before, I don't think rejecting spam at 
the smtp level is a bad idea, ie 551 - We think this is spam.  How ever, 
bouncing spam after the smtp acceptance is a bad idea.

Since most spam is coming either from infected PC's or spammers dsl 
connections, rejecting at the smtp level is usually not a bad idea.  It 
also allows for legitimate email that is marked as spam to be returned 
to the owner, if you just make spam vanish to /dev/null you may find you 
have some very unhappy clients further down the road who are wondering 
where that letter from the Legal department is.

Regards,

Rick

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[Neil Watson <sa...@watson-wilson.ca>]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 10:24:47AM -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote:
>their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like crazy 
>but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by spamass-milter.

Rejecting spam is not a good idea.  Most of the time you end up spamming
some poor sod who has been joe-jobbed.  Discard spam.  Don't add the to
problem.

-- 
Neil Watson               | Gentoo Linux
Network Administrator     | Uptime 9 days
http://watson-wilson.ca   | 2.6.11.4 AMD Athlon(tm) MP 2000+ x 2

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[alan premselaar <al...@12inch.com>]

Steven W. Orr wrote:
> Recently I have been getting phone calls that friends have been getting 
> their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like 
> crazy but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by 
> spamass-milter.
> 
> Anyone else getting this?
> 
I'm pretty sure your friends haven't been sending me mail... they 
certainly haven't been calling me.


(IOW, no. haven't been getting this)

Re: Problem with mail being rejected by friends!

[Matt Kettler <mk...@comcast.net>]

At 10:24 AM 4/15/2005, Steven W. Orr wrote:
>Recently I have been getting phone calls that friends have been getting 
>their mail rejected by sa. I have been adding whitelist entries like crazy 
>but I really loathe having to disable spam rejection by spamass-milter.
>
>Anyone else getting this?

Nope.. Perhaps you should check your mail logs and try to find out what 
rules are hitting the messages.

Check for misfires of Dialup RBLs.. If that's happening, check your 
trusted_networks setting.