Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: spam return address backlash
From: Roger Safian <r-safian () NORTHWESTERN EDU>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:31:55 -0600
At 02:21 PM 1/11/2007, Cal Frye put fingers to keyboard and wrote:
Roger Safian ventured to comment, at 1/11/07 11:46 AM:Thanks for everyone who responded to this. As for the topic of rejecting bounces, while I agree the RFC was written in a kindler gentler time, I don't think that rejecting bounces is a good idea.Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding runs like this: Bounce a message, and your mail server creates a new bounce message and sends back to the sender of the suspected spam. Reject a message, and if the sending system is a genuine mail server, /that server/ will send an error message to the local user regarding the "bounce." If the sending system is a suborned spammer, the reject will be ignored and it will pass on to the next address in the queue. Result: genuine users do receive word of the delivery failure; forged sender addresses go unmolested.
My thinking is that until some critical mass of the internet operates according your outlined scenario, I'm not sure this matters. While we can do much within our own network, we can obviously do nothing outside our network. That means that we would still have to receive the bounced messages, while potentially not generating them ourselves. Seems like the worse of both worlds. If that's not correct, please let me know. -- Roger A. Safian r-safian () northwestern edu (email) public key available on many key servers. (847) 491-4058 (voice) (847) 467-6500 (Fax) "You're never too old to have a great childhood!"
Current thread:
- Re: spam return address backlash, (continued)
- Re: spam return address backlash Mark Borrie (Jan 09)
- Re: spam return address backlash Gary Flynn (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Dick Jacobson (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Russell Fulton (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Cal Frye (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Jeff Giacobbe (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash H. Morrow Long (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Cal Frye (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Cal Frye (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Paul Russell (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Russell Fulton (Jan 12)
- Re: spam return address backlash Cal Frye (Jan 13)