Bouncing back spam

[Alessandro]

Hello,

This is just a question to all of you that have more competences than I have about email.

Stating in advance that having catch all mailboxes is a bad thing in order to avoid spam, I'm wondering if is possible to refuse any kind of messages adressed to a specific email.
Having a very old catch all mailbox under my company's domain, I don't want to receive anything that is adressed to a couple of old emails (making email bouncing back), but continue to receive the rest.

At the moment I'm planning to eliminate this catchall mailbox, but it has been used for 8 years and it will take some time to work it out.

[Brangwyn]

I can't think of anything you can really do server side, what email client are you running on your local PC ?

[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

I can't think of anything you can really do server side...

I was afraid of this.
Thank you for the reply anyway.

PS. I'm not interested of doing something locally because I already have set an automatic reply for those addresses. My goal would be (while eliminating the catch all mailbox) not downloading all the spam addressed to these emails.

[gadgetgal99]

Make separate mail boxes for the ones you want to bounce and then turn on the Discard All Incoming Mail setting for each. I think that should do what you want

[jmbeach]

doing that won't make them bounce, but it certainly will make them go away

Of course, once you dump the catchall, those messages will get bounced anyhow, so it may be worth stepping up efforts to get rid of it.

[Alessandro]

Thank you guys

Only doubt: if I close the door of a mailbox, are you sure the catchall one won't receive their mail subordinately?

[gadgetgal99]

test it but the catchall is only suppose to get mail that doesn't have a mailbox. Let us know the results of the test

[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by gadgetgal99

test it but the catchall is only suppose to get mail that doesn't have a mailbox. Let us know the results of the test

Ok, did it and it seems working. At least while cleaning the addresses before closing the catchall account our (matrix's) mail servers will have less spam to manage (a small drop in the ocean...).

Thank you again for the hint.

You do NOT want to bounce spam to spammers, they dont have valid mail servers so those bounces sit in our queue unless they are real bounces generated by the mail server.

We have a lot of people who have set up autoresponders, and these autoresponders respond to a lot of spam every day, only to have those messages sit in the queue. If it weren't for these autoresponders, our queues would be about 200-300 messages less. (They are only about 200-300 messages depending on the server... hehe) OH, but it doesn't hurt the machine, it just bugs me (Qmail has an algorithm on how often it will try to send a message)

[jmbeach]

I know, I hate that when I set an autoresponder (only do it when I'm on vacation) It sends email to spammers.

I got back from a recent trip, and I've seen a huge increase in spam. Don't know if that means some of the autoresp. messages are getting back to the spammers, but it's a good way for them to harvest valid email addresses. Just wish there was a way to have autoresp. capability without the threat of responding to spammers.

[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by Bladesnitz

You do NOT want to bounce spam to spammers, they dont have valid mail servers so those bounces sit in our queue unless they are real bounces generated by the mail server.

We have a lot of people who have set up autoresponders, and these autoresponders respond to a lot of spam every day, only to have those messages sit in the queue. If it weren't for these autoresponders, our queues would be about 200-300 messages less. (They are only about 200-300 messages depending on the server... hehe) OH, but it doesn't hurt the machine, it just bugs me (Qmail has an algorithm on how often it will try to send a message)

Just to know, I never set any kind of autoresponder on the server side. I'm doing it locally and the messages are staying in queu until I give the ok.

I hope what I'm doing isn't potentially problematic for the mail system (creating mailboxes that drop the mail). Please let me know if there is something useful I can do.
(No, closing the domain is not an option)

Nope, its not problematic.

[mresell]

The only autoresponder I use is for hsphere TT. I think It would be nice if hsphere let you restrict messages for TT to come from certain domains or you could setup a block list. Maybe getting SA on a user level would do it. Spammers guessing your TS email which is usually user friendly then can get possible confirmation of the address. Spam at a support address is yucky, right Vortech.

Yep
Like i said, we dont ha ve issues with the autoresponders Its just makes our queue look fuller than it is...