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Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system?

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On 9/25/23 14:58, Rick Macdonald wrote:
> Some of the mail in the queue is up to 4 days old. I'm going to clear 
> it all out to see what new arrives in this state.

I've made a bit of progress.

First, I deleted the almost 6000 messages in the mail queue:

# mailq | grep 1q | cut -c11-26 | xargs exim4 -Mrm

Then I noticed that I was still getting more, but always the same 4 
messages. I checked on the Dreamhost server where I pull my mail from 
and sure enough found those 4 messages "stuck" there. I deleted the 4 
from Dreamhost, and now all is quiet for the moment.

These 4 messages were all spam. I think the mail in the "mailq" kept 
growing because fetchmail was repeatedly trying but failing to retrieve 
the same messages over and over.

I see a fetchmail option that might help, but I'm wondering if I might 
then lose some non-spam problematic mail that fetchmail can't fetch?

> *--nosoftbounce*
>     (since v6.3.10, Keyword: set no softbounce, since v6.3.10)
>     Hard bounce mode. All permanent delivery errors cause messages to
>     be deleted from the upstream server, see "no softbounce" below. 
> *--softbounce*
>     (since v6.3.10, Keyword: set softbounce, since v6.3.10)
>     Soft bounce mode. All permanent delivery errors cause messages to
>     be left on the upstream server if the protocol supports that.
>     Default to match historic fetchmail documentation, to be changed
>     to hard bounce mode in the next fetchmail release. 
>

I'm running fetchmail v6.4.37. It appears that --softbounce is still the 
default. Since they intend to change the default someday to 
--nosoftbounce, maybe this option isn't as dangerous as it sounds to me?

Lastly, do I understand correctly that the root of this whole issue is 
simply misformed headers in the original spam mail that I receive at my 
Dreamhost account? Oh, and does all this lead to the "Frozen Message" 
emails I receive (described in a prior email)?

Rick

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Thread

Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-25 05:00 +0200
  Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2023-09-25 16:40 +0200
    Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-25 20:40 +0200
  Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2023-09-25 18:10 +0200
    Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-25 20:30 +0200
      Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2023-09-25 20:50 +0200
        Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-25 22:40 +0200
      Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2023-09-25 22:30 +0200
      Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2023-09-25 22:30 +0200
        Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-25 23:00 +0200
          Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-26 01:00 +0200
            Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2023-09-26 01:20 +0200
              Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@shaw.ca> - 2023-09-26 03:50 +0200
              Re: Are people trying to relay mail through my system? Curt <curty@free.fr> - 2023-09-26 16:40 +0200

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