Re: Bouncing Spam

Ellad Tadmor wrote:
>
> Hi Bert,
>
> Thanks for the reply. So I guess what you are saying is that the bounced
> message does not reach the spammer, but an innocent site used by it. I
> can see how that would be annoying.
>
> However, it seems to me that it is your responsibility as the
> administrator/postmaster to prevent spam from being distributed off your
> domains. Just like individual users should install anti-virus software
> to limit the spread of viruses, mail domains should have software to
> prevent the spread of spam. Now I understand that spam is currently not
> easy to detect, but that just means that the way email is processed and
> distributed needs to be significantly changed. It should be impossible
> for someone to send out an untraceable message. Also, perhaps a tiny
> charge needs to be placed on sending email making spamming unprofitable.
> Something needs to be done. If people respond by bouncing spam back
> where it came from (which I do not consider abuse) pressure will be
> brought to bear (unfortunately on people like you) and perhaps some
> changes will occur.
>
> I am playing devil's advocate here to some extent. Since I'm a nice guy 
> I probably will not be bouncing messages given what you've said - but I 
> definitely understand people who do and think they have the right to do 
> so.

Ellad, you missed what Bert was saying.

His systems aren't sending the spam.  Spammers are *pretending* to send as 
him by fabricating the return address, much as you could with postal mail. 
I own a bunch of domains and I'm subject to the same thing and it's 
getting worse every day.  It's trivial to send mail pretending to be 
someone else, resulting on more backscatter e-mail.  I can assure you that 
if you were to set up something like this 99.99% of all email that doesn't 
bounce back to you will land in the mailbox of an innocent bystander. 
Spammers haven't been around this long because they're stupid.  The few 
who are often (but not always - there are still some spam-friendly ISPs 
out there) have their mailboxes shut down within minutes of sending the 
spam.

A good friend of mine used to live next-door to an unabashed spammer. (had 
I lived next to him I probably would have wrung his neck, but that's just 
me).  Anyway, he said that most spammers will remove you from their list 
on request but then turn around and sell your e-mail address for 5x as 
much to other spammers since it's known to be valid. So the old advice of 
NEVER reply to spammers is still true.

If you really want to make a difference learn to read the headers[0] and 
forward spam to the owner of the mail server just before yours.  I find 
that about a third of the spam that makes it through to me comes from 
cable modems (roadrunner and comcast are the worst) with virus-infected 
PCs behind them.  You could also look at the spammer's URLs and complain 
to the IP block owners, though the vast majority are overseas now and 
couldn't care less so I stopped doing that a while ago.

-Jason

[0] http://www.stopspam.org/email/headers.html

-----
    --- There are no absolute statements.  I'm very probably wrong. ---
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
  					- Albert Einstein
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