At 12:44 PM -0400 7/24/02, Stefan Jeglinski  imposed structure on a
stream of electrons, yielding:
>><bill.*@blacklisted> = bill.*
>><bill.dice> = spamtrap
>><bill.techies> = spamtrap
>><bill.*> = bill
>>
>>The last line allows me to invent 'bill.whatever' addresses ad hoc,
>>and have them all funnel into 'bill'. The first line makes it so
>>that if a blacklisted host happens to try mailing one of them, it is
>>rewritten as if it is not blacklisted.
>
>Why do you do this (the rewriting as if it is not blacklisted)? I
>understand the concept behind the last 3, but not the first. I would
>think you would not want to receive any mail from a blacklisted
>domain - after all, that's the purpose of blacklisting to begin
>with... ?

The point is that the tagged address becomes a clear path.

Note that I have a very aggressive blacklist. I have multiple Verio
/16 networks (i.e. big chunks of their colo space) as well as
Earthlink and parts of AOL (that MAY include some of their outbound
regular mail servers, but I THINK doesn't) blacklisted. I also have
some spam-for-hire operations blacklisted (like Digital Impact and
Flonetworks) who actually have legit customers who I might sign up
for mail from and never get IF I didn't 'wormhole' the tagged
addresses.


>>One at a time. What I do with my postmaster account is this:
>>
>><postmaster%*@blacklisted> = postmaster-blocked
>>
>>That makes postmaster for any domain I host route to
>>'postmaster-blocked' if the mail comes from a blacklisted IP. The
>>'postmaster-blocked' account autoresponds with a message about the
>>blocking and dumps the mail into a folder that I occasionally peek
>>at. You could be simpler about it of course, and just route
>>
>>user%domain@blacklisted = user
>
>I admit that I am still confused about the % wildcard and exactly how
>it works, even though I use it in my router (I can follow a formula
>:-). It's not documented on Stalker's Router Settings page.

It's not a wildcard. It's what a @ becomes if you have to tack on
another domain (or pseudo-domain like 'blacklisted')

>% seems to be an �ber-@ that has to be distinguished from the other @
>that is already used in this line.

Yes. It has been used that way to route mail for a very long time,
although I don't think it has ever quite been official. You can do a
sort of inverted bang-pathing with it  (or could, back before
spammers made open relaying a sin.)  Basically an address of the form
"user%host1@host2" is a way of saying "tell the server on host2 to
deliver the message to user@host1."  Since more than one @ in an
address is a Bad Thing, the conversion to % to layer domains is
necessary.


--
Bill Cole
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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