Spam reports for addresses without mailboxes

#1

I’m getting a junk mail report about "torben@g-b.dk". This is as expected. But I’m also getting junk mail reports for a few addresses that don’t have a mailbox associated; they are just forwarders, not mailboxes. That means that mail is being caught that I can’t release! I can’t even adjust the filter settings because there’s no mailbox to log in to. This is causing me to lose mail!

I’ve reported this before the beta period finished, in the thread
http://discussion.dreamhost.com/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=betatesting&Number=11962&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1
dated 05 August 2004, but received no feedback on it.

Questions:

  1. How can I release caught mails when there’s no account?
  2. Why are forwarding-addresses filtered at all? Shouldn’t the filter be on the mailbox?
  3. Why didn’t Nate react on the report within the beta testing period?

This relates to "webmaster@g-b.dk" and "writeus@g-b.dk" and "exarken@erebaltor.dk" (all on the same DH CDI hosting plan).

I’ll also put this to DH support through the web panel.

TorbenGB
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#2

TorbenGB,

Interesting delema. I for one really need to have forward-only mail filtered. My domain has been around for awhile and all of my family members (who mainly use the forwarding feature) love (and need) to have their mail filtered.

But I see your concerns:

  1. What happens to filtered spam on forward-only addresses? Where does it go? Can it be released? (I don’t actually need this, see #2.)

  2. Are there spam reports for forward-only addresses? At least to some default mailbox? (I do at least need this - even if the mail is not retrievable. Because at a minimum we can contact the sender.)

  3. How does one set the filter settings for forwarded addresses? Does it use the default score of 4?

  4. A suggestion: Let each domain set one default mailbox for spam administraiton of forwarded addresses. Use this default mailbox to get filter settings, quarenteen messages, receive spam reports for all the forwarded addresses, and allow releasing from quarenteen (to continue on to be forwarded to the correct e-mail address). That way one real existing mailbox could take on spam administration for all the forward-only addresses.

I’m guessing a work-around is to create real mailboxes for each forwarded address. Will this really work? Does forwarding-also on real mailboxes occur before or after spam filtering?

In general, I feel I need substantially more documentation on how the spam filter works. I need enough to understand what I can and cannot do. How mail is forwarded or filtered or not. Where things go in all the various cases, etc. Then I can figure out ways to deal with the screwy cases I have. As it is, I’m trying to run experiments – but it takes time as it takes quite a while to get filtering turned on or off and create test mailboxes. I’d rather just read how it all works and go from there.

Erik

#3

Reply from support:

Fine :slight_smile:

Do I understand correctly that all addresses are filtered, but only those addresses that have a mailbox log-in can actually release (or even adjust) what’s filtered??
Nate, this definitely requires a redesign…

I’m glad to hear that the filtered mail isn’t just deleted, but there was never any information about this. I expected filtered mail to be purged after 30 days as per the filter’s default settings.

This new junk mail filter is really great, it’s incredibly efficient. It’s okay that there are some details to sort out afterwards, and that such things weren’t necessarily done in the beta period. As long as they do get solved eventually.

Thanks,

TorbenGB
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#4

Still having problems with this, and no comment from DH support in 15 days …
Hello?

TorbenGB
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#5

As soon as the new code is pushed live, forwarded mail will be tagged but never quarantined. Fixes are in the work for some other related bugs as well; this should be pushed live early this week hopefully.

#6

This is great news. Two questions remain:

  1. What will happen with the mails that are already quarantined? I still don’t have a way to release this… help!
  2. Seems you’ve been working on this for some time, and that’s good news. Since you knew this would be released at some point, you could’ve at least responded preliminarily to my support request of 16 days ago?

TorbenGB
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#7

It’s now 5 days past the last post of 12/6/04.
I am getting emails from worried clients having the same problem. I have put in a ticket to support, but I also have to respond to the client and tell them WHEN they can expect to get these quarantined emails that are NOT spam, and how to do it.
Is there any further news, with a real solution, about this situation?

Susan