Microsoft_Exchange

• How can I get Exchange 5.5 to stop sending NDRs?
• Can I use Exchnage 2000 Public folders to report spam / notspam?
• HOWTO: Change the SMTP port in Exchange
• HOWTO: Modification to make exchange public folder for whitelist additions?

How can I get Exchange 5.5 to stop sending NDRs?

Just FYI, I figured out how to get Exchange 5.5 to stop sending Non-Delivery Report (NDR) messages... At least for invalid user addresses. Did some digging on the Internet, and found out that really the only way to do it is this: -- Create a "distribution list" in Exchange called something like "Terminated Employees", with no members. Then hide the list. -- Add SMTP user addresses (presumably for users who are no longer employed there, but could be anyone you want as long as the address isn't used somewhere else already) to the distribution list. This method results in NDR messages not being generated because the address DOES exist... it just doesn't GO anywhere. According to what I read while finding this tip, the incoming messages do not get stored anywhere... they just "disappear".

So that, combined with redlisting "Postmaster" in ASSP, has pretty much resulted in the elimination of NDR messages from Exchange... while leaving the Postmaster mailbox able to receive incoming mail addressed specifically to it. That way, if anyone on the outside has a problem, they can still reach you using the Postmaster address. Unless you use this method, Exchange 5.5 will ALWAYS send out NDR messages for any e-mail sent to an invalid address. There is no known way to turn it off the "feature". (Apparently, Exchange 2000 DOES have a way to disable NDR messages.)

In Exchange 5.5 (not 2000) you can enable the SMTP VRFY-command to reject email delivery at the SMTP-Level. Microsoft does not recommend to enable this feature as spammers will then be able to quickly check which accounts are hosted on your server, so spams will be more direct. In Exchange 2000 the VRFY-command is no longer supported.

Refer to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;289521 Disabling NDRs at all is not really a good idea as senders, who accidently misspell the mailaddress will get no reply that their mail was not delivered.

Redlisting should help to protect the whitelist from adding the NDR-receivers

Can I use Exchnage 2000 Public folders to report spam / notspam?

I created public folders, named "Spam" and "Nospam", and tell our users copy mail examples on it. Then on Exchange machine, on disk M: (virtual disk for Exchange mail storage) I can find .eml files in plain text format (header+body), just copy it to c:\assp\spam and nospam, and use move2num.pl to convert file names to numbers. This task easy to automatize with .bat files.

Users not need change it client's configuration (our organization use Outlook as MAPI client on most workstations)

Users, who connect to Exchange over SMTP/POP3/IMAP, can forward spam to Public Folder's mailbox adress.

I think it's useful methode for such configuration.

See also http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=897310&forum_id=235332

HOWTO: Change the SMTP port in Exchange

You CAN change the SMTP Port on Exchange 5.5 - quite easy, but not well documented: Look for the "services." file (usually at c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\)

load this in the editor and change the port number for SMTP to anything other than 25. Make sure Editor does not add any file extension to this file upon save or remove it afterwards.

done.

Exchange 5.5 reads this file on startup and uses whatever port there is for SMTP.

HOWTO: Modification to make exchange public folder for whitelist additions?

I have ASSP set up and proxying for Exchange 2000. As someone suggested, I created public folders for spam/notspam reporting, and have those messages moved over into ASSP on a nightly basis. I wanted to be able to make whitelist additions the same way and not have to resort to the email or web interfaces... So here's my very first Perl hack. I'd love to hear from any of you Perl programmers (particularly JohnH, of course) on whether this is broken in any way or if there's simply a better way of doing it.

I added these two subroutines to ASSP.PL (doesn't matter much where they go - as long as it isn't in the middle of an existing routine...):

################ HACK
sub FileWhiteCheck {
 local $_;
 mlog(0,"looking for file-based whitelist additions...");
 foreach $filename (glob("$base/whitelst/*")) {
   open(F, "<F>) {
     last if /^[\r\n]*$/;
     for $a ($_=~/^From:.+?([^