[Mimedefang] How to turn 'postmaster notify' off

[Joseph Brennan]

--On Wednesday, August 23, 2006 11:25 -0400 Yanick Quirion 
<YQuirion at tranzyme.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm using sendmail with mimedefang. I'm having problem with spammers
> that sends an e-mail to un user that doesn't exist on my organization.
> The server will send a "user unknown" it the sender, but if the sender
> e-mail address is fake, I will get this:
>
> Aug 23 10:27:12 neptune sendmail[22781]: k7NERBHS022778: k7NERCHS022781:
> postmaster notify: User unknown
>
> There is a way to turn off this "postmaster notify"?


This is a sendmail question, not a mimedefang question.

The situation you describe is called a double bounce.  The original
recipient is not valid, and the original sender is also not valid.
Look at the sendmail documentation for "doublebounce".  You can route
it to an address other than postmaster.

However, sendmail normally refuses mail for user unknown, and you
should try to do that instead of mailing a bounce.  Both virus and
spam mail may contain an irrelevant but valid address as sender, so
mailing a bounce to the "sender" is not a good idea.

Joseph Brennan
Columbia University Information Technology