[Mailman-Users] Bounce issues with Yahoo

[Harold Paulson]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Stephen,

On Mar 2, 2006, at 9:48 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>>>>>> "Harold" == Harold Paulson <haroldp at sierraweb.com> writes:
>
>     Harold> Do you really have a *policy* to accept messages that you
>     Harold> will never deliver, save them to disk, and then generate
>     Harold> reject messages for them?
>
> As I read his post, indeed he does.  He wants legitimate posters to be
> told they need to sign up for the list before they can post.  It's
> true that you can supply a reason for an MTA rejection, but (in my
> experience) it is unfortunately also true that many originating MTAs
> are not configured to report that reason.  Others will substitute a
> stock text for the numerical code (especially in cases of
> internationalization).  The most reliable way to give those legitimate
> users full information is for Mailman to create and send a bounce
> mail.

Ah, this is a good criticism: other MTA's bounce messages can't be  
trusted to be readable by the sender.  Mailman after all, is sending  
a notice, not exactly generating a bounce.  A better policy-server  
might greylist non-member senders.  95% of the spammers will go  
away.  All of the normal posts would go right through.  Members who  
send from the wrong account would get the usual Mailman notice.   
Occasionally wrong-account-posters would have to wait a long time on  
their notice.


> Because of the specific issue with Yahoo, he "deeply regrets that we
> must make a special exception for Yahoo."
>
> When implementing that policy exception for Yahoo, it would make sense
> to do so at the MTA level, as you suggest, if his MTA provides the
> hooks and he can write the needed glue code.  (It's a bit much to call
> that exercise "configuration", IMO.)

Yeah, I just bristle at a hack for one destination based solely on  
it's size, when this is a general problem.  It could be that other  
ISPs blacklist servers based on the ratio of valid:invalid addresses  
that you send their way (AOL does this).  We just notice Yahoo or AOL  
because they are big, and our phones start ringing when they  
blacklist us.
This treats a symptom, not the problem.

The problem is that we are making net.messes by automatically  
replying to junk.  It would be nice to see a general fix.

	- H






-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin)

iD4DBQFEB+JFOy/dHTCUq6oRAnonAKCbxFOCNY4UXfHHugXrp8aVKzQRUgCYgcv1
bbAo8RhAMAotNPoHtljqUA==
=2gHo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----