> >The only solution I've come up with to this problem is to reject 
> >blocked
> >addresses *before* you close the connecting with the sending mail 
> >server,
> >and the only MTA that can do this nicely that I've found is courier 
> >with
> >the localmailfilter feature.
> 
> I don't see how this is morally any better then sending DSNs from the 
> maildrop filtering stage of delivery.  They both seem the moral 
> equivalent of the practice of blacklisting some email servers because 
> they send spam.  In that case a DSN is sent back to the email sender 
> (faked or real), isn't it?  This has the same effect as what I am 
> suggesting.  If one's address becomes a drop box for a spammer, I feel 
> sorry for them (it's happened to me), but I don't think this should 
> stop us from rejecting email that seems to spam.

Well, I'm not really blocking any specific mailservers. In my case, I'm
blocking messages that Spamassasin thinks are spam.

I am also trying to actively push some of the load of spam back onto the
smtp servers that are sending it. My assumption is that a number of
these are hijacked windows machines, in which case maybe my filter will
slow them down a bit.

Others are either open relays (and deserve the extra load), or the
direct source of the spam. (There is a possibility that someone is
getting caught here that shouldn't be, but there isn't a solution to
that until something like the 'senders permitted from' or RMX standards
that authenticate From: addresses are deployed.)

> 
> Additionally, I don't think the more complicated solution of using 
> localmailfilter would solve my problem because then I would never 
> receive the email, which, thought I don't read, I archive.  It would 
> also be simpler to be able to do it from within my dot-mailfilter file.

This does bring up a shortcoming of localmailfilter.. I'd like to at
least log the sender and receipient of all mail rejected by my 
.mailfilters/smtpfilter, but it's not clear if this can be done nicely.

I also wind up running spamassassin twice.. once to check if the message
is spam in .mailfilters/smtpfilter, and the second time to put the headers
on it so I have an idea what kind of spamassasin scores mail that *does*
get accepted for delivery has.

> Morally, I should inform the legitimate email senders that their 
> message was not received by me.  I am essentially rejecting their 
> message by filtering it into a mailbox I will never read.


-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troy Benjegerdes                'da hozer'                [EMAIL PROTECTED]   

Somone asked my why I work on this free (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/)
software stuff and not get a real job. Charles Shultz had the best answer:

"Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems? They do it
because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's why
I draw cartoons. It's my life." -- Charles Shultz


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