Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:07:39 +0100 From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= <des@des.no> To: Benjamin Lutz <mail@maxlor.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How Fetchmail made me a spammer Message-ID: <867hrkx52s.fsf@ds4.des.no> In-Reply-To: <201001141016.56877.mail@maxlor.com> (Benjamin Lutz's message of "Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:16:56 %2B0100") References: <201001141016.56877.mail@maxlor.com>
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Benjamin Lutz <mail@maxlor.com> writes: > 2) Fetchmail downloads that 20MB email from the public POP3 server. > 3) Fetchmail tries to pass the email to the local postfix server. > 4) Postfix refuses the email with a permanent 552 error because > it's larger than 10MB. > 5) Fetchmail generates and sends a rejection notice, but does not > delete the 20MB Email from the POP3 server because the > "softbounce" option is still the default. > 6) Fetchmail sleeps 60 seconds. > 7) Continue at step 2). > [...] > - Fetchmail's defaults are dangerous. The softbounce option, which is the > default (the manpage claims it'll be disabled by default with the next > version,) can generate large amounts of spam. None of this would have happened if you were using IMAP instead of POP. Unlike POP, IMAP a) provides a way to mark a message as "processed" without deleting it and b) does not renumber messages or reuse message numbers. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no
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