Re: Sorbs.net DNS Blacklist

[Devdas Bhagat <devdas () dvb homelinux org>]

On 09/03/06 15:54 -0600, Dan Denton wrote:
> I've got some updated info since the original posting. I spoke by email
> with a gent at payments () sorbs net, and was told that the reason we were
> blacklisted was that a spammer sent a message from a forged username at
> a particular domain. The email hit an address at our server that was no
> longer in use, and of course a bounce message was sent back saying the
> address doesn't exist. 

WTF are you bouncing email for non-existent users instead of rejecting
at SMTP time?

> Evidently, this response is considered spam in and of itself by
> sorbs.net, and that's what got us on the blacklist. Never mind that we

And by a few others as well. Google: bounce attack spam, outscatter,
backscatter.

This may not sound like much to you, but when you get a million bounces
(or two) because you got joe-jobbed and a bunch of bonehead admins decided 
to accept-then-bounce, it does becaome a serious issue.

> were the ones who got spammed in the first place, and our mail gateway
> was only doing what it was supposed to do. I was told that if we ceased
> such "harassment", then we would be removed from the blacklist. 
>
> Symantec, who makes our gateway, has it documented on their website that
> this feature cannot be disabled, and that such responses are required by
> RFC 821. I can see the point. If there's no response to the sender of an
> email who accidentally puts a typo in the email address they're sending
> to, how the heck would they know if their email reached the correct
> party or not? They'd receive no response from a real user, and they'd
> probably wonder why they're being ignored. In a business setting, that
> behavior could lose you money real quick.
_REJECT_ not _BOUNCE_. A "550 No such user" message from your SMTP
gateway would work fine, let senders know that their mail has not
reached its intended recipients and would be less abusive on the
Internet infrastructure.

Devdas Bhagat

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