I will respond to part of this, although it wasn't directed to me. Tim Williams wrote:
> However it really depends on the use-case, relaying through another > server will give you no control over bad addresses, you have to wait > for bounces from the recipient's server, or conversely the ISP server > can give fails 4xx & 5xx for valid addresses. The ISP may only > accept email addressed from their local domains, and you may be > breaking their TOCs or AUP and get blocked. I usually will have no problem with this, and for one reason is because before I add a new ISP to my spam reporting queue, I establish a direct SMTP connection with the ISP's "abuse" email server to confirm the Email is good. I get a lot more then my share of BAD or Bogus Emails listed in some of these whois queries I get. > > On the flip side, some ISPs block outbound port 25 except through > their servers, or transparent proxy port 25, so Direct MX is > unusable. I send all of my spam reports through a commercial T1 link.. I made the bad mistake of sending my spam reports directly from my ComCrap (err - comcast) account, and my service got hosed for a day or so. >> Hmmm - the problem I have is if I knowingly >> put in a bad recipient, and try to send to a >> unknown user, I get all appearances that >> the mail went through. > > > Yes this will happen if you use a relay server. yea - I know.... :-( > >> Ok, so If I already have a MX hostname >> of "mail.myhost.com", then I would put >> into my "to_email"... <myusername>@myhost.com for > > > Yes, if you just used username the server wouldn't know which domain > the email was being sent to and therefore how to route it. > >> By the way, I'm sending this mail to a "sms" >> gateway to a cellular provider, so the >> username is their phone number. > > > If you only ever send to this gateway then you might as well try MX > records, you will have more control, but you will need to manage > queueing yourself for temporary failures, or you may decide that if > you get a temporary failure (4xx) to just fire the email off to your > ISP server and let them deal with it. I'm currently exploring a number of different options at this time, including giving the customer an option to go back and re-visit their order page and get an update in the event the message bounces. I'm setting up a special "reply_to" address which I use to collect bounces, and customer's asknowledgement they got the content. Once I get the Ack from the customer, I'll KNOW they got the product. > > >> But >> (sigh), these providers don't appear >> to tell me if I put in a bogus phone number. > > > Unfortunately not all mail servers will fail an invalid address even > if they aren't relaying the email. I haven't really run into a lot of them, but I've had NO experience with SMTP->SMS gateways. > But in this case the SMS > "gateway" is probably relaying to a backend system for the SMSc and > will accept any address with a valid domain part. I already know that Sprint does this, but (sigh) I don't even get the bounces if I re-direct them to a specific Email box.... DARN - Foiled again. John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
