[HCoop-Discuss] Filtering out bogus bounce notification e-mails

[Michael Olson]

Adam Chlipala <adamc at hcoop.net> writes:

> I own a number of domains that years ago I set up so that I receive all 
> e-mail sent to any of their e-mail addresses.  This is very handy for 
> giving a different address to each online service that requests one, so 
> that you can blacklist any address that ends up receiving spam.  
> Unfortunately, spammers like to use made-up addresses in the From 
> headers of their messages, and this includes random addresses at some of 
> my domains.  Spammers also often send e-mail to nonexistent or full 
> mailboxes.  The helpful mail servers at the other end send back bounce 
> notifications to let the sender know that such messages couldn't be 
> delivered.  When the fake From header points back to one of my e-mail 
> addresses, I'm the one who receives the irrelevant bounce notification, 
> not the spammer.

An alternative solution is to edit your
/etc/domains/<path-to-your-domain>/.aliases file as follows.

 - Remove or comment out the rule that starts with "**".

 - Explicitly list every email address that is used on that domain and
   send each to your username on hcoop (by putting your username on
   the right).  For example:

comments mwolson
me mwolson
me+gnu mwolson
me_google mwolson
mwolson mwolson

This has completely eliminated annoying bounce messages for me, and
I've been using it for about 3 months.

-- 
Michael Olson -- FSF Associate Member #652 -- http://www.mwolson.org/
Interests: Lisp, text markup, protocols -- Jabber: mwolson_at_hcoop.net
  /` |\ | | | Projects: Emacs, Muse, ERC, EMMS, Planner, ErBot, DVC
 |_] | \| |_| Reclaim your digital rights by eliminating DRM.
      See http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm for details.
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