Hey,
I have several thousand email addresses, the vast majority of which are
definitely no good, and I want to figure out which are good.
So I will send out an email to all the email addresses. By making a list of the
ones that bounced, and comparing that list with the full list, I can determine
which are still good.
This is for a non-profit association -- I am not in the spam business.
Knowing exactly which emails bounced would be much easier if I could set up an
in box implementing VERP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_envelope_return_path
In other words, I want an in box accepting all mail where the email addresses
match a wildcard pattern like this: mail_admin_??????@domain.org, where ??????
are 6 digits. The digits would be a scrambled contact ID. Since they will be
digits only, here is the regular expression: mail_admin_\d{6}. (We will pick a
wildcard pattern that does not conflict with any existing address on the
server.)
Sending the outgoing emails, each with a different "From" address
matching the wildcard pattern, is not a problem -- I have a working python
script for this.
The challenge is getting one in box to accept emails with different
"From" addresses (matching the wildcard pattern).
We are running IMAP server Dovecot 1.0.7.
How do I set this up in the IMAP server to accept emails to addresses matching
the wildcard pattern?
Thanks,
Rick Graves
* Rick Graves <gravesricharde at yahoo.com>:> Hey, > > I have several thousand email addresses, the vast majority of which are definitely no good, and I want to figure out which are good.Setup mailman Create one list set bounce limit to 1 fill it with the addresses to be tested send one mail to the list wait retrieve the pruned userlist via list_members listname -- Ralf Hildebrandt Gesch?ftsbereich IT | Abteilung Netzwerk Charit? - Universit?tsmedizin Berlin Campus Benjamin Franklin Hindenburgdamm 30 | D-12203 Berlin Tel. +49 30 450 570 155 | Fax: +49 30 450 570 962 ralf.hildebrandt at charite.de | http://www.charite.de
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 06:40:22AM -0700, Rick Graves wrote:> How do I set this up in the IMAP server to accept emails to addresses matching the wildcard pattern?Normally incoming mail doesn't arrive via IMAP; it arrives via SMTP. So you'd configure an SMTP server (e.g. exim) to accept incoming mail, and to deliver it into the appropriate mailbox. exim is very flexible and can be configured with all sorts of policy for validating e-mail addresses. Here's an example of the sort of thing you can do http://psg.com/~brian/software/authbounce/configure-authbounce.txt (that particular example adds a magic header rather than VERP) You may also get some useful hints searching for exim and BATV/PRVS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Address_Tag_Validation Regards, Brian.
Ralf, We are running Mailman. Great suggestion! Thanks, Rick --- On Thu, 3/25/10, Ralf Hildebrandt <Ralf.Hildebrandt at charite.de> wrote:> From: Ralf Hildebrandt <Ralf.Hildebrandt at charite.de> > Subject: Re: [Dovecot] can Dovecot do VERP? > To: dovecot at dovecot.org > Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 6:49 AM > * Rick Graves <gravesricharde at yahoo.com>: > > Hey, > > > > I have several thousand email addresses, the vast > majority of which are definitely no good, and I want to > figure out which are good. > > Setup mailman > Create one list > set bounce limit to 1 > fill it with the addresses to be tested > send one mail to the list > wait > > retrieve the pruned userlist via list_members listname > > -- > Ralf Hildebrandt > ? Gesch?ftsbereich IT | Abteilung Netzwerk > ? Charit? - Universit?tsmedizin Berlin > ? Campus Benjamin Franklin > ? Hindenburgdamm 30 | D-12203 Berlin > ? Tel. +49 30 450 570 155 | Fax: +49 30 450 570 962 > ? ralf.hildebrandt at charite.de > | http://www.charite.de > ??? ? ? >