Posted by Richard Lynch on 10/04/83 11:11

On Thu, March 17, 2005 2:37 am, Scott Haneda said:
> on 3/16/05 12:46 PM, Todd Trent at todd@hogfishdesign.com wrote:
>
>> - This could be hosted on shared hosting server.
>> - Opt-in list could be less than 100 or in the 1000¹s.
>> - May need a way to track sending success.
>
> Check this out:
> <http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/>
>
> I use it to create HTML emails, send them to 1000's of people. I think I
> did a test to 30K or so, it handled it fine using mail locally.
>
> As for tracking, what we do is embed a image bug in the html and track
> when
> that loads, it is getting less reliable in todays anti spam world, but in
> my
> case these are paying subscribers so they generally want to get these
> emails.
>
> To track your users, at least the bounces we set the bounce address
> (return-path) to mysql_user_id@domain.com and POP check domain.com every
> few
> seconds. We then scan for the bounce address and mark that user as
> bouncing
> x times, if they go over y we cancel the account.

So I could forge a bunch of bounces from somebody else's email account and
guess/use their ID in your table, and get them kicked off your service?

Cool!

[that was light sarcasm]

You might maybe wanna use some kind of one-time token such as that
described on http://php.net/uniqid instead...

PS Yes, some semi-legitimate spammers will drop you from their lists if
you bounce email. The total scum spammmers won't -- Their return address
isn't even their own, much less something they check. I *WISH* all email
clients had a "Bounce" button to return emails as if they had bounced...

--
Like Music?
http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm

[Back to original message]