[Mailman-Users] Too many Bounce action notifications

[Cyndi Norwitz]

   From: "Vikram Goyal" <tech at craftbits.com>
   Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2007 14:36:13 +1000

   I maintain a medium sized mailing list (over 40000) to which a
   newsletter is sent out every few weeks. Till recently, I had no issues
   with this list, but after the last newsletter was sent out, I have
   started receiving "Bounce action notifications" by the truckload.

Just as something else to consider...

Do the bounce messages quote the newsletter or at least the subject line?
Are you sure it is the newsletter that is bouncing?  Do the email addresses
returning a bounce match subscribers to your list?

There is a new style of spam (well, not that new) that spoofs your return
address and sends out massive amounts of messages to random people (it has
a specific name I can't recall).  Then you get all the bounces (because a
percentage of people will always bounce).

When this has happened to me, I typically get 3-5000 (yes, thousand) bounce
messages over the course of a couple of days.  My husband just got his
first one two and it completely overwhelmed his account.  It has nothing to
do with running a mailing list, though you are more vunerable if your
address is out there on the net.

What you're describing sounds an awful lot like this.  Especially since you
have set up bounces for your list not to come to you.  It sounds like the
address that was spoofed was one used by MM, which would slow down the
system for sure.

Of course, I may be totally off here, but I wanted to throw it out there
just in case.

Cyndi