3

As an example:

If the mail comes from an address noreply@xyz.com, then the systems responds with "why would we want to read your mail if you don't let us reply".

Is this accepted behavior in the net community or can we get in trouble for it?

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  • 8
    Seriously? This isn't grade school. People don't get in trouble for funny email replies. What kind of trouble do you imagine? That the email etiquette police will ticket you? Your email doesn't get blocked based on the disposition of your reply. Spam filters don't scan your email for sarcasm. If there is such a spam filter I'd like someone to point it out to me. This site is for questions about problems related to professional systems administration. This question doesn't fit because any professional with an ounce of respect for their profession and the IT field wouldn't ask this question. – joeqwerty Jun 13 '14 at 22:56
  • The problem isn't how you word the message. Being funny and creative is perfectly fine, as long as it doesn't obfuscate the point you are making. The real trouble is how you generate the message. If you accept the message in the first place and then automatically generate a bounce, you are well on the way to creating a bounce loop. If you want to send such a message back, the only clean way to do it is to reject the mail and put your message as the error message once you reject the incoming message with a permanent error. If you do it at the end of DATA, you can still store the incoming msg. – kasperd Jun 14 '14 at 8:59
12

Don't do that. At best, it is a waste of bandwidth. At worst, it's spam. It will do nothing but annoy people and could damage your mailserver's reputation.

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  • 1
    i like all other answers too, but this one together with 3 mins later Michael´s is addressing the kind of trouble we might get in, getting bad reputation and being blocked, thanks! – maximilian Jun 13 '14 at 22:43
12

Don't do this for yet another reason.

The noreply address (which bounces) is meant to prevent anyone from receiving a reply to automatically generated emails.

By coincidence, just last night I received such an email from a user of a website I admin, because the autogenerated mail had the return address of hostmaster@example.com, instead of a noreply address. I received several of them, in fact, profanity laced all-caps screaming with dozens of exclamation points, all intended for someone else.

Naturally, I firewalled his IP address and reconfigured the app to use a more appropriate noreply address.

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10

I'd avoid doing that.

You'll run into a noreply address eventually which auto-replies with "no, really, no replies to this address" and an infinite loop of email will be born.

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7

You are also telling the sender that your email address is a valid one. Be prepared to potentially receive a lot more unsolicited email when you do this.

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-2

Reply if you want to receive a lot more spam.

As for "trouble" - hilarious!

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