Re: Bouncing Spam

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007, Ellad Tadmor wrote:

> The Apple mail application has a nice feature for dealing with spam. 
> You can "bounce" a message back to its origin with the (false) 
> information that your email account does not exist ("User unknown"). 
> It doesn't always work, but in some cases the system sending out the 
> spam will remove your "incorrect" email address from its list, 
> resulting in a reduction in future spam. (My wife tested this theory 
> and did observe a reduction in spam.)

Don't even *think* about doing this without learning, in excruciating 
detail, how to read e-mail headers, to make 100% sure that the person 
you're "(mis-)informing" is actually the sender.

One of my domains is often used as a sender by a common e-mail worm, and 
I can assure you that once you start getting 2,000 forged "bounces" a 
month, ones patience with the forgers drops below freezing point, no 
matter how well-intentioned they are.

As to observing a reduction in spam: that's probably due to the natural 
ebb and tide. Contrary to popular belief, bouncing addresses are rarely 
removed from lists that spammers trade amongst themselves. And contrary 
to popular belief, most spammers do actually remove complainers from 
their list (not that they won't resell the address, but see above).

As a closing note, most fake bounces I've seen are eminently 
recognisable as such.

Don't fight abuse with abuse, please.

Cheers,

 				- Bert
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