email management

NodeWorx Feature Requests
1

Problem: the email management available through the CP is lacking
some important features. Specific email addresses become the target
of spammers and can’t be repudiated, absorbing bandwidth etc. The
worst is that if a catch-all address is in use, spammers somehow learn
that anything@domain will be received and take advantage of it, resulting
in tons of alphabet spam or tons of alphabet bounce messages from well
meaning domains responding to spam.

  1. the ability to specify that some email address bounces.
  2. the ability to specify that some email address just gets silently eaten
  3. the ability to catch not-quite-all with a wildcard

I’ve developed some prototypes that work for me but are not generalized,
which I would be more than happy to share with you.

2

[quote=ddyer;11156]Problem: the email management available through the CP is lacking
some important features. Specific email addresses become the target
of spammers and can’t be repudiated, absorbing bandwidth etc. The
worst is that if a catch-all address is in use, spammers somehow learn
that anything@domain will be received and take advantage of it, resulting
in tons of alphabet spam or tons of alphabet bounce messages from well
meaning domains responding to spam.

  1. the ability to specify that some email address bounces.
  2. the ability to specify that some email address just gets silently eaten
  3. the ability to catch not-quite-all with a wildcard

I’ve developed some prototypes that work for me but are not generalized,
which I would be more than happy to share with you.[/quote]

Thank you. I agree that this would be a nice feature. If you have specific ideas as to how to implement this, our developers would love to see them. Please feel free to either post here or send to info at interworx.com and someone will discuss it with you.

3

more on email

to implement the bounce and blackhole options, use a qmail
feature where files with names .qmail-xxx act as delivery specs
for xxx.

so if .qmail-blackhole contains

 |cat > /dev/null

and .qmail-bounce contains

 |/home/vpopmail/bin/vdelivermail '' bounce-no-mailbox

then setting an alias for foo as bounce@domain or blackhole@domain
has the desired effect. There are other ways this functionality could
be brought to the control panel, but this is pretty simple.

There is a qmail feature where a file called “doublebounceto”
in /var/qmail/control/ can contain the name of the address
for double bounce messages. This should be brought out to
the control panel UI just as the catchall address is.

The catch-all problem is more complex. Ideally it would be solved
by implementing wildcard aliases within the existing alias panel, but
for my own use I’ve hacked a simple filtering scheme before the
single catchall address is allowed to take effect. This filtering
is tacked onto the last clause of /home/interworx/lib/maildrop/spamfilter

else
{ # come here for every address that doesn’t have a home. If it has an alias

just use it. If no alias, filter before passing to the catchall

IALIAS =/home/vpopmail/bin/valias -s $EXT@$HOST
#log “alias to $IALIAS”
if(! $IALIAS)
{
#log “not explicitly aliased”
test -r $IW_VDOM/.domainmailfilter
if( $RETURNCODE == 0 )
{
exception {
include $IW_VDOM/.domainmailfilter
}
}

    }

to $IW_VPOP
}

and my .domainmailfilter contains

log “Match $EXT”
if(!lookup( $EXT, “$IW_VDOM/goodnames.dat” ))
{ #log “no match - to junkmail”
# this moves to the junkmail dir
#IW_VPOP = “/home/vpopmail/domains/real-me.net/junkmail/Maildir”

# this actively rejects
IW_VPOP = "|/home/vpopmail/bin/vdelivermail '' bounce-no-mailbox"

}