Not to single you out, but I've seen this comment a few times from different people in this thread and I keep wondering why the assumption is that if you are rejecting email for your customers (whether you are a service provider or a company) you can't tell them some information about the rejects.
Well, let me ask you this.
My company decides it wants hosting from your company. I send you an E-mail saying "Sign me up!" It bounces. I go to another company.
Assuming that you reject the E-mail before it is delivered, all you know is that an address "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" tried sending an E-mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". How can you tell from that whether I was looking to pay for a hosting service, or trying to hawk viagra? Or, how do you know it isn't a Fortune 500 company sending you a RFP for a major hosting contract versus someone trying to sell you a mortgage?
I can't. I don't. This is why I said "some information". Obviously a script is not clairvoyant and can only glean the information it has at that point in the SMTP conversation. I just want people to realize that the impression that some information about a reject can't be given to the intended recipient is bogus. Even without the details, I may look at the report and realize that there are X number of rejections to my sales@ address and I think that X is too high for me so I have that address unfiltered. Again, things are not black and white and what to one person is acceptable may be unacceptable to another.
Along the same lines as you note in the examples above, I also can't tell if the person calling me with no caller ID is a phone solicitor or someone inquiring about my goods and services. However, I may not pick up the phone if I'm on the other line since almost all of those calls have historically been phone solicitors. Or, there may be nobody available to pick up the phone. Using your argument above, the potential customers go to another company. This happens every day throughout the world. That is how people work.
If I don't filter, I'm spending my time on dealing with spam and not on answering inquiries in a timely fashion. I have to balance that with the odd case that if I do filter, someone can't get through. Serve my existing customers and most potential customers to the best of my ability or allow spammers to waste my time for everyone and possibly not reject a message from a few potential customers. For me, I like the former. Some people may prefer the latter and that's OK.
Also, you're assuming I filter my public contact addresses. You're assuming people use email for important things. You're assuming people don't use Web forms to communicate with me and that my filters don't whitelist my Web server in some way. You're assuming people know what a reject message means even if the details are given and don't assume it is just "a computer problem" and pick up the phone. Some of these assumptions may be correct, some may not be. This is how the world turns.
-Scott
-- Chris Scott Host Orlando, Inc. http://www.hostorlando.com/
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