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Date:	Fri, 4 Feb 2005 17:43:12 PST8
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: blocking msgs at SCOUG server

Content Type: text/plain

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Ray Davison wrote:
>
> Peter Skye wrote:
> > The spam isn't a list problem, it's a user account problem
>
> One time you said no one could get mail because spam overloaded
> something and you had to clear it manually. Is that something you
> have fixed or have a fix for?

Background: Occasionally SCOUG receives a huge amount of undeliverable
spam. This is due to 1) spammers "guessing" at email addresses (i.e.
send to allen@scoug.com, bruce@scoug.com, chris@scoug.com etc -- none of
which are valid email addresses) and 2) spammers sending to our mail
lists where the messages are rejected because they aren't from list
members. When the messages are rejected, they are sent back to the
sender. *However*, if the spammer uses a false From: line which is not
a valid address, the SCOUG server attempts to but cannot send the
message back and therefore leaves the message in the outgoing mail queue
"in case the address is only temporarily invalid" and tries again every
few minutes.

What happens: If you have, say, 1500 messages waiting to be returned
and none of them have valid From: lines, and the server has 20 different
threads trying to send messages, and each message takes several seconds
to determine if it can be sent or not, then by the time you get to the
1500th message you are several minutes past the last time the 1st
message was tried, and it's time to try the 1st message again. This
loop runs until the messages are either automatically deleted from the
queue (SCOUG waits three days) or until somebody manually deletes the
messages from the queue (me and my nimble fingers) or until somebody
writes a utility which is smart enough to identify the good bounces from
the bad bounces and just delete the bad ones (we don't have such a
utility).

The current fix: Manually delete the bad messages.

The future fix: Write a utility to delete unreturnable messages and
make sure it doesn't delete something that a server thread is currently
processing.

- Peter

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