I'm not sure if I understand you but let me take a shot. You are suggesting that since SpamFilter sends email to our email server it can learn which email addresses are real since the email server (exchange or whatever) will either accept it or not. Then at night (or whenever) SpamFilter can go through and figure out which email addresses are actually active and only accept email for those?

If that is the case I don't think it will work for a few reasons. I and others here use another filter (Trend IMSS) behind SpamFilter for various reasons, so before the email gets to our email server it passes though another filter and SpamFilter never gets a response from the email server about the validity of the email address. Also, it would have to be a real time solution because when we add new email addresses, those people need to be able to get email immediately. If I told them it would take 24 hours or 'till the next day I will be flipping burgers before long.

With that being said I do like you idea. I had suggested in the past that SpamFilter have an optional LDAP connection to a server you specify (a domain controller) and for every email it could do a small query to see if the email address is real. This was shot down because it gets away from the main duty of SpamFilter and it was suggested that I script all valid email addresses out of our environment and have them automatically added to our approved sender list. This would work, but I haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Again, I’m not even sure if I understand your question correctly, so if I got it wrong just ignore all this.

Thanks

The Trend Interscan Messaging Security Suite is used for several things. It does have some spam filter ability but that isn’t really too good unless you buy the addition spam piece and SpamFilter beats it hands down so we just use it for creating disclaimers and some other policy type rules. It also does all our virus checking, which works very well.

Would be just easier to write a script to get the userlist for everyone and put it into the AuthorizedTo list on a regular basis. We poll our 2 mailservers every 10 minutes and download a list of all users (about 6200) and put them into the authorizedTo list. We poll this frequently so as new customers come on board and start adding email users they are automatically added in 10 minutes. Amazing how much stuff is stopped by the AuthorizedTo list.

Most mail servers should allow some type of scripting to get this info. We use Merak and Imail. Even if you use ldap you should be able to query the mailserver and build a list of valid email addresses and overwrite the AuthorizedTo list on a regular basis.

Well for now all the customers are also customers whom I manage their exchange server so it's not a big deal for billing, however that is an interesting way to look after billing! Currently we do email based entirely on domains, which has been successful, it is based on the honor system as far as billing goes.

Alan wrote: Hey WebGuyz, I am a bit disappointed that the new LDAP feature in SF in not used for incoming.  But I see that you have another method to do something similar.  Could you provide some assitance or script to help with your method of automatically extracting LDAP emails from Exchange.  I am being hit hart by a spammer spoofing my domain with literally tens of  thousands of bounces just over the past two days.  You can contact me via the forum private messaging if you want to keep confidential. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Alan,

  Take a look at this ADSI script below. If you can get it to work then maybe it can be modified to get a listing of Exchange mailboxes. I don't have Exchange but if its in the ballpark then maybe it can be a starting point. I can help you with the ASP, but not the Exchange testing. You may have to run this on the Exchange server.(hopefully you have to have IIS on that server)

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=241474