Can you have too many forwards?

[JonathanB]

So, I started using this new strategy to combat spam. When I sign up for a newsletter or web site forum, I use a unique address, which I then set a forward on my domain to my real address.

So, if I ever start getting spam, I know where is originated from and I can discard the address easily.

My question is, if you do this for a lot of things, can you have too many forwards where it will drain on the system? Right now I've only got about 10 or so forwards so I'm not worried about it. But do I need to watch how many I have in the future?

[Vin DSL]

Sorry! Does not compute...

Can you restate your question please?

[jason]

It shouldn't be a drain unless your alias file gets so big that it takes a long time to parse. But if you figure some Unix systems have thousands of users, the system has to parse a single passwd file (and possibly a shadow file as well) every time a user logs on to that system, and this happens without any major performance hit, then you are probably OK.

When a message comes in the server looks for a mailbox with a matching address. If it can't find one it goes to the alias file for the domain and loops through it looking for a match. Unless you have a ton of addresses in there that are slowing down thesearch process I doubt it would be a problem. The only overhead that's added by adding an forwarder is the couple milliseconds added to the time it takes to parse the alias file for each message.

--Jason

[JonathanB]

That makes sense Jason, thanks. That's what I thought the answer might be, just wanted to make sure.

Vin, (assuming you're not joking)...

I've been using a unique address for newsletters or forums I join. For example, say I sign up for a boring weather newsletter, I'll use the address weather@mydomain.com which I set to forward to my real address.

Then if I ever start getting spam addressed to weather@mydomain.com, I know where the address leaked out and I can quit the newsletter and easily discard the compromised email address.

[Gwaihir]

Ehm; why go to the trouble of setting up forwarders for that? I do the same, but I just use the catch-all mailaddress. Whatever xyz@mydomain I enter somewhere, it will end up in that mailbox.

That is: except for the two addresses so far that indeed got compromised badly, those have a "forwarder" straight to the /dev/null now.

[Connie]

Gwaihir,

Possibly one reason is the cathall is already getting tons of spam. At the point of 200 per day I set the catchall to discard so I don't receive anything in the catchall account .

That may be JonathanB reason for the forwards. You start getting spam on a forward just deleate the forward.

[JonathanB]

That's exactly it Connie.

Gwaihir, If I would use my catchall in that manner the real messages would be lost in a sea of spam. I suppose I could set up some kind of spam filter, but with the method I'm using now (using the forwards and setting the catchall to :fail: ) I don't have to mess around with that.

[Joshua Clinard]

I do the same thing. I have about 40 forwarders set up so far. There are still several forums that I have not changed my e-mails at yet, but I've changed it for all the buisiness sites I use.

Does anyone know what the alias file is called, so i can edit it manually?

[jason]

I believe it is in /etc/valiases/<yourdomain.com> (or it might be in /var..., I can't remember right now). It is owned by you, but since they put in JailShell you can't reach it. (I used to do manual edits all the time...)

--Jason