[Mimedefang] Testing and dictionary attack..

[Kelson Vibber]

At 09:14 AM 7/7/2004, Net Guy wrote:
>What has been decided:  Do I just drop eMail from whomever that has the 
>wrong reciepent, or do I bounce it ( nouser: No user here by that name 
>)?  In my limited view of things I see that either could have benefits:
>
>Bounce -> the folks that are real and not spammers know that they screwed 
>up the address.
>Drop -> the spammers think that the address works, so the spam lists grow 
>with invalid names.

I suggest bounce (in the action_bounce, reject at SMTP time sense).  The 
potentially large consequence of losing a legitimate message outweighs the 
likely small benefit of polluting the spammers' lists.

I say it's a small benefit because:
- If you're dropping the message, you still need to waste the bandwidth to 
make them think you've accepted it.
- Unless you're tarpitting it, it won't slow them down much.
- Many spammers don't clean up their lists anyway.  Heck, many legit 
mailing lists don't either.  We get lots of mail sent to long-dead 
accounts, some of which I ended up reactivating, watching for (and 
unsubscribing from) legit newsletters, and turning into spamtraps.


Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>