Server Admin & SpamAssassin configuration

Question

Server Admin & SpamAssassin configuration

At Server Admin (mail, settings, filters) I can set "Junk mail messages should be 'Bounced'". In the mail documentation this is described as

Bounced: Will send the message back to the sender. You can optionally send
an email notification of the bounce to some email account, probably the
postmaster.

So what is more recommended... "Delete" or "Bounced" (I can trust my mail filter so far that no false positives are generated, therefore just marking spam is an obsolete action for my purpose) ?

I feel that when I use "Bounced", such returned mails could come back to me (e.g. if the original sender does not exist or mail server refuses to accept my returned mail).

And in worst case, can't this lead into an endless loop that sends back and forth messages between my server and a server I sent the returned mail to ?

Is this a potential risk ? What are your settings and how do they work for you ?

Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 21, 2006 11:02 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

pterobyte

Level 6

11,098 points

Nov 21, 2006 12:00 PM in response to tobias Eichner

So what is more recommended... "Delete" or "Bounced"
(I can trust my mail filter so far that no false
positives are generated, therefore just marking spam
is an obsolete action for my purpose) ?

You have already answered your own question, haven't you? 😉

Bouncing spam is always a bad idea and creates unnecessary network traffic.

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Answer 2

Nov 21, 2006 1:07 PM in response to pterobyte

On the other side, you could spammers (those not using fake sender addresses) know that their mail was declined and they can save the efforts next time.

But you are right of course, it creates unnecessary traffic and in most times it goes to an undeliverable address.

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Answer 3

pterobyte

Level 6

11,098 points

Nov 21, 2006 1:07 PM in response to tobias Eichner

On the other side, you could spammers (those not
using fake sender addresses) know that their mail was
declined and they can save the efforts next time.

Do you actually believe they check this and care?

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Answer 4

Nov 21, 2006 1:34 PM in response to pterobyte

Well, I don't know exactly how a spammer works (since I'm not tried this business myself 😉 but I know that people dealing with address databases regularly scan their lists against server problems.

The reason is simply that they can sell working e-mail addresses much more expensive than bulk lists of addresses.

And while bulk address lists are sent often by novice spammers not taking care much, I guess that for premium lists, spammers take more efforts to get their message through mail filters - and these may be such coming through right into my inbox.

Anyway, I'm also at the same point of view that bouncing messages just creates problems and the effect I said above may not worth the efforts.

But I'm eager to hear other people's experiences and ways they handle this 🙂 I'll close this "question" since it not really was one, but if somebody wishes to say something or give me more tips, don't hesitate 🙂

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Answer 5

davidh

Level 4

1,890 points

Nov 21, 2006 7:10 PM in response to tobias Eichner

pterobyte is right here.

Please don't ask if you're not genuinely interested in accepting and learning from good advice 🙂

You can theorize all you want and be as wastefully sympathetic to spammers as you please, meanwhile you'll have gained nothing but wasted energy & resources (hopefully not on your server !) 😉

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Answer 6

Nov 22, 2006 1:10 AM in response to davidh

@davidh: I'm not sure what you intend to say with your posting. Before taking "good advice" I think it is not a bad idea to talk about and get different opinions, is ? 🙂

So while you can state that bouncing mails generates wasted resources also my statement above has some truth in it (at least I'm convinced from me... so far 😉

BTW: I had set and have set to delete spam without bouncing it back. But it had be possible that there are some advantages of bouncing I was not aware and this is the reason for this thread.

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