Spam and double-bounces

[Charles Steinkuehler]

The company I work for runs qmail, which acceps all mail addressed for 
the configured local domains, then bounces any mail for which there is 
no valid local mailbox durring the delivery process.

This means spam for non-existant accounts (or accounts that have been 
closed) gets accepted and then bounces (rather than getting 550'd at 
SMTP time).  With most recent spam using forged from: addresses, the 
usual result is a double-bounce that gets sent to the postmaster (by 
default).

I have just re-directed the double-bounce mail to a seperate account, 
causing all double-bounce notices to get sent to /dev/null, but am 
wondering:

- Are there any nasty side-effects of simply dropping double-bounce 
reports?  I really don't want to wade through them all if I don't have to.

- Anyone got any suggestions for other ways to reduce the volume of mail 
aimed at the postmaster account (I'm seeing over a gig of e-mail dialy 
to postmaster!).

Qmail specific tweaks preferred, but all advice is welcome!

Thanks,

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net