[Mailman-Developers] 2.1.8 documentation mismatch

[Brad Knowles]

At 3:46 PM +0100 2006-06-07, Ian Eiloart wrote:

>>  Ian mentioned that he thinks we should change "Reject" to "Bounce", but
>>  I'm not sure I like that.  Rejecting a message or a subscription
>>  request is the action that the admin takes.
>
>  OK, i'm talking about messages here, not subscription requests.

	List moderators deal mostly with messages, list administrators 
deal more frequently with things like subscription requests.

	We need to distinguish here what we call what, in what context.

>                                                                   As I
>  understand the terms, a "reject" is an SMTP response to a remote server (or
>  MTA) trying to send email. It means "I'm not accepting this email, you
>  choose what to do with it". The sending MTA may choose to generate a DSN,
>  and a DSN that reports a hard (5xx) rejection is often referred to as a
>  bounce message.

	Actually, no -- that would be a refusal.  A rejection would be 
something you would send after accepting the message initially, and 
then discovering that you could not deliver the message for some 
reason.

	So, when it comes to spam, you want to refuse it and not reject it.

>  There's a REALLY REALLY REALLY important difference in the case of spam.
>  Most spambots will ignore a reject and NOT generate a DSN bounce message.
>  However, if you choose to bounce the message, then a DNS will be sent to an
>  innocent third party. That's collateral spam, and it's a nightmare.

	Yes, blowback is a problem.  I'm not sure that anyone can resolve 
this problem any time soon, however.

>  Unfortunately, RFC2821 says that you must generate such collateral spam,
>  and that's why I want my MTA to be able to read Mailman's config - so that
>  it can reject email properly at SMTP time.

	See my previous responses.  We may be able to teach the MTAs how 
to read some of the databases that Mailman might be using when it 
would be making its decision to accept or reject the message, but I 
don't think it's going to be possible to teach the MTAs everything.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

  LOPSA member since December 2005.  See <http://www.lopsa.org/>.