[Mimedefang] On pinheaded ISP's (sort of OT)

[Jeff Rife]

On 31 Jan 2007 at 12:59, Kevin A. McGrail wrote:

> My latest annoyance though is with the procedures from 
> http://www.borderware.com/ and, for example, 
> http://intercept.borderware.com/lookup?ip=63.216.184.10
> 
> We, of course, have decent procedures in place to extend the edge of our 
> networks using fine programs like MIMEDefang.  But we are also the backup 
> mail server for hundreds of domains.  However, they count NDRs as SPAM even 
> though we only generate an NDR when it is impossible to otherwise and we 
> have no reason to believe our problem is anything other than NDRs.  (see 
> http://bsn.borderware.com/faq.php?ip=63.216.184.10&d=pccc.com&u=)
> 
> Is anyone else running into issues with their intercept system?

First off, I hadn't realized you were such a close neighbor...howdy 
across the river.

Second, it's funny they consider NDRs as spam because of the 
backscatter issue, since their product (MXtreme) causes a lot of them, 
as it has no way to directly retrieve internal e-mail addresses (LDAP, 
etc.).  It requires manual configuration to know what are valid e-mail 
addresses.  And, it's such a pain to do this that its easier to just 
accept everything and let the back end sort it out.

Third, my former employer was a loosely-knit group of companies owned 
by a larger company, and each "division" had its own e-mail domain 
(from when they were standalone companies), but one division was 
responsible for the shared e-mail domain.  They ran an MXtreme as their 
border device.  We ran MIMEDefang, and my 8-year-old e-mail address got 
basically zero spam and viruses, while my new shared e-mail domain 
address THAT HAD NEVER BEEN USED EXTERNALLY FOR ANYTHING received 2-3 a 
day through the MXtreme box.

Now, this could have been just a configuration issue, as the admins of 
the MXtreme box also had not set up their Exchange box to reject 
unknown addresses (we used Exchange as a back end, and our Exchange 
worked correctly with md_check_against_smtp_server.


--
Jeff Rife |  
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