A big thank you to all those email administrators out there who have just spammed the hell out of me
That's right, you, the guy/gal with your hands in your pockets looking at your shoes - I hold you responsible.
Sure, it wasn't you that unleashed this volley of spam on the world, BUT, it was you that configured your server in such a way that it sends a helpful little email NDR informing me that the 4,500 emails I apparently sent out yesterday, unfortunately didn't make it - because jjwse032jds@yourdomain.3ejw doesn't actually exist...
Recipient filtering and tarpitting - AD Lookups - Recipient validation. Every half decent mail system has this functionality, and if yours doesn't then you either upgrade your life to the 21st century, or drop any anti-spam system infront of it - such as GFI or Vamsoft (no, anti-spam built into your anti-virus, is not real anti-spam)
OK, I accept some of the responsibility - I have a catchall setup on my domain. Why? Because I have had it for so long that I don't know what addresses I have published. I have an idea, but I will miss a few. Needless to say, after this little stint, that is going to change (especially as I am now staring down the barrel of a long weekend).
Additionally, I wan't to make an apology of my own, and plead for you to bear this in mind the next time you write a fake email address in a public forum. Make it unroutable, please. I have been guilty of using yourdomain^com or whatever^com but am far more concious of this since being on the other end. A few years ago, some online star trek folk (no capitalisation for you) had a website called swd (or something). Anyway, their domain was swd^net^au - they then had the idea of masking that against spam by listing it as BLOCK^net^au - see the problem here? Fair enough, the domain wasn't registered back then, and their domain is now long dead (posted in 98 originally, I believe), but it has made me pay more attention to what I am writing as a domain name.
Anyway, I have a few thousand emails to move around
Kieran