RE: [cobalt-users] SPAM relay bouncing causing mailserver on our network to retry constantly

[Greg Hewitt-Long <cobaltusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Can anyone shed some light on how to prevent our mailservers
>> from trying to deliver this junk for 5 days?
>>
>> One example email I got back from an ISP playing netcop
>> contains the following so we can identify them:
>>
>> reason: 552 5.0.0 UCE not accepted.In case of error contact
>> the postmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> I am just fed up going through my postmaster messages for
>> these SPAMs and deleting them - I'd like to configure
>> sendmail to look for headers and NOT ATTEMPT to relay the
>> back to the original sender.
>
>I'm not sure what you can do about this. I've seen it as well. Since
>they're rejecting during the SMTP and before the DATA, your server now
>has to handle that rejection. The only way it can do that, since you
>already accepted the email, is to try to return to sender.
>My server already rejects about 95% of all email attempts using various
>DNSBL and my own access list, so I'm not seeing too much of this. AFAIK,
>the only thing you can do is try to delete the mailqueue holding it,
>otherwise it will keep trying. I don't think they're playing netcop at
>all. They're doing their job and blocking spam.


Your opinion obviously varies to mine, and the way we handle email and SPAM - and that's not a problem - my problem is that our policy with SPAM is to provide our users a way of identifying the spam (changing the subject as MailScanner allows), and to pass the message through - this removes the doubt that a false positive will result in lost business, and puts the onus on the user to filter and ensure any false positives are found, minimizing the exposure you have a hosting provider.  If *ANY* hosting provider simply bounces email on the basis that it has been  identified as SPAM, they are exposed to liability for lost emails which are incorrectly identified as SPAM.  You may prefer it that way - I do not.

Our policy will stand for the time being - do you have any suggestions as to how to help with the problem as it presents itself in our setup? 

I'm not interested in changing company policy on SPAM purely for our convenience, but I am interested in NOT attempting to respond to these invalid email and attempting to relay then back to a bogus sender for 5 days (preferably *AT ALL*).



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