Why don't I get addess-not-found message when I send to a invalid email address?

[Muse]

Occasionally I send an email to an entity whose existence I'm not sure of - maybe it's an old address, maybe it's hard for me to determine their address... some kind of uncertainty. I used to get emails to me when an email couldn't be delivered for whatever reason - invalid domain, address no longer exists, whatever. I'm with SBC and I am in the pacbell.net domain. My email client is Forte Agent 1.93/32.576.

To test my theory (that I don't get those messages anymore) I sent an email yesterday to bogusperson@bogusaddress_49299.com. That, surely, is bogus. I got no return message. What could be the problem? Obviously, this is a problem. I am using Mailwasher and I looked through my blacklist and couldn't see anything that would weed out the messages I'm looking for. Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[tsar chasm]

Spam protection systems have gotten smarter and now automatically drop messages that have no good sender. This is how my mail server is set up. It does an LDAP check on my user directory and anything that doesn't pass muster is immediately dropped. It stops spammers from creating "known good" email address lists.

 

[wpshooter]

My guess is that every who administers your e-mail has choosen to turn this function off to save on traffic.

You should contact your ISP and say what the hey !!!

 

[corkyg]

I tried your bogus address - I also use Mailwasher Pro 5.0. As I see it, you will only get a bounce back (DAEMON) if the domain is real. That is who rejects the wrong address. With a phony domain as in your sample, it simply disappears into cyberspace.

If you send it to <bogusaddress@aol.com> you should get a rejection response.

I got this one:
------------------------------------------
The original message was received at Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:39:26 -0400 (EDT)
from sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]

*** ATTENTION ***

Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with its delivery. The address which was undeliverable is listed in the section
labeled: "----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----".

The reason your mail is being returned to you is listed in the section
labeled: "----- Transcript of Session Follows -----".

The line beginning with "<<<" describes the specific reason your e-mail could
not be delivered. The next line contains a second error message which is a
general translation for other e-mail servers.

Please direct further questions regarding this message to your e-mail administrator.

--AOL Postmaster

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<bogusaddress@aol.com>
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to air-xn03.mail.aol.com.:
>>> RCPT To:<bogusaddress@aol.com>
<<< 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND
550 <bogusaddress@aol.com>... User unknown

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: corkyg
I tried your bogus address - I also use Mailwasher Pro 5.0. As I see it, you will only get a bounce back (DAEMON) if the domain is real. That is who rejects the wrong address. With a phony domain as in your sample, it simply disappears into cyberspace.

If you send it to <bogusaddress@aol.com> you should get a rejection response.

I got this one:
------------------------------------------
The original message was received at Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:39:26 -0400 (EDT)
from sccrmhc13.comcast.net [204.127.202.64]

*** ATTENTION ***

Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with its delivery. The address which was undeliverable is listed in the section
labeled: "----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----".

The reason your mail is being returned to you is listed in the section
labeled: "----- Transcript of Session Follows -----".

The line beginning with "<<<" describes the specific reason your e-mail could
not be delivered. The next line contains a second error message which is a
general translation for other e-mail servers.

Please direct further questions regarding this message to your e-mail administrator.

--AOL Postmaster

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<bogusaddress@aol.com>
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to air-xn03.mail.aol.com.:
>>> RCPT To:<bogusaddress@aol.com>
<<< 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND
550 <bogusaddress@aol.com>... User unknown

Interesting. I just closed my Mailwasher 1.33 (freeware), and sent a message to a bogus aol.com address and got a message from MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com. I did it again with Mailwasher open and never got it. I looked and saw that MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com was on my blacklist. I don't know how it got there. I deleted it. That will only save me from aol.com non-existent addresses. I must have other blacklist issues, is what I'm thinking. Thanks for the input.

Edit: Figuring I will always want mailer-daemon@*, I put this in my friends list in Mailwasher. Would that cover all bounced emails from me?

 

[tyanni]

the problem with doing what you are doing is this - imagine a nasty virus spoofs your email address and sends 5000 emails to random addresses which don't exist but the domains are valid. Now the mail server each for these non existent email addresses sends a reply to the nasty virus saying "hey, we can't find that address". Who do you think gets all 5000 replies? I believe thats why mailwasher rejects MAILER-DAEMON addresses by default.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: tyanni
the problem with doing what you are doing is this - imagine a nasty virus spoofs your email address and sends 5000 emails to random addresses which don't exist but the domains are valid. Now the mail server each for these non existent email addresses sends a reply to the nasty virus saying "hey, we can't find that address". Who do you think gets all 5000 replies? I believe thats why mailwasher rejects MAILER-DAEMON addresses by default.

ahm. Well, is there a workaround? Cause it would be nice to know when someone doesn't get an email from me. So I know they aren't ignoring me, they just never got it.

Uh, why would someone write a virus that spoofs my email address? How likely is that? If it does happen, can't I just activate a filter or blacklist scenario to take care of it? I mean, 5000 screwy emails will sure get my attention. Now that I deleted all those blacklist items, I can't just put them back. Well, I can, sort of because I have saved previous versions of my Mailwasher blacklist, so I could get them from there. Thanks for the help.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Muse
Uh, why would someone write a virus that spoofs my email address? How likely is that?

I get several a week that use my email address - that's an easy fix in Mailwasher - I put my email address on the blacklist.

But - even for blacklisted stuff - you have achoice. It shows you all the messages in your POP3 box - blacklisted and whitelisted. All you have to do is uncheck "Bounce" and you can have it delivered. Also, you can read it by double clicking without downloading it.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: corkyg

Originally posted by: Muse
Uh, why would someone write a virus that spoofs my email address? How likely is that?

I get several a week that use my email address - that's an easy fix in Mailwasher - I put my email address on the blacklist.

But - even for blacklisted stuff - you have achoice. It shows you all the messages in your POP3 box - blacklisted and whitelisted. All you have to do is uncheck "Bounce" and you can have it delivered. Also, you can read it by double clicking without downloading it.

I noticed myself in my own blacklist today and deleted that entry. I'm not sure, but I think I was receiving emails from myself anyway, probably because of a filter I have or maybe I have myself on my friends list. I like to be able to send myself an email. That way I can forward things to myself and have them front and center in my inbox. I don't do it daily but I do it frequently.

I have my Mailwasher configured to hide blacklisted items. I believe they get deleted automatically from the ISP server, in fact. I don't even want to see blacklisted email. For that reason, I'm careful when I see an item that Mailwasher wants to put on my blacklist. I look it over and decide if I want to see it or if I want to never see anything from that sender again. If the latter, I leave it blacklisted. If not, I uncheck the blacklist checkbox. I don't get much stuff like that. I only get such an item maybe every other day or so, seems to me. Yes, I often read some of my emails in Mailwasher itself by double clicking them. Sometimes I'm just curious, sometimes I'm trying to decide whether to have a sender permanently blacklisted as I just described in my post. IOW, I won't see anything from them again - gotta be careful doing that.

If I'm not too sure about a poster, I won't leave them blacklisted. I may check the delete checkbox in Mailwasher if I don't want the item, or otherwise if I want to download it this time. If I definitely want to see future emails from the poster, I will probably put them on my friends list or give them a positive filter. If I'm not sure, I will uncheck the blacklist checkbox and know that next time I get an email from them, Mailwasher will probably show it and the blacklist checkbox will be prechecked - i.e. I will see it and evaluate it. Like I say, this isn't a problem for me as things have been going because I get less than one of these a day, I believe.