Re: Using PHP with bounce-back emails

Hello, On 10/17/2002 03:25 PM, Daren Cotter wrote:

Perhaps this is more of a SendMail issue, but I wish to use PHP to accomplish this... I use PHP / MySQL to email my mailing list on a daily basis (100,000+ emails). I have a current way of keeping track of inactive & active members, but it's not very good...I'm actually afraid to remove inactive members, because I don't want to remove legitimate members. The solution cannot involve modifying my database, as I do not want to edit thousands of lines of code. Instead, I wish to use the bounce-back messages from mail servers. I.e., "Account Over Quota", "Invalid Account", etc...I would develop a script that would log this, and delete members accordingly.

The greatest problem is that some people are subscribed to one address but they forward to another that ends up bouncing the messages. The solution that I use is to set the return-path in such way that it identifies the real subscriber address that is bouncing. For instance, if a message is sent to daren_cotter@yahoo.com, the return path is set for instance to errors-daren_cotter=yahoo.com@bounce.phpclasses.org . Bounced messages will go to this address. Then I have a script that captures these messages and parses the recipient address of the bounces and extracts the real subscriber address. To avoid having to send personalized messages, I use qmail with VERP (Variable Envelope Return Path) that even when I set all the recipients in Bcc:, it expands the return path in the way shown above for each recipient. -- Regards, Manuel Lemos