Re: Does it work?

Gareth wrote:

> I've also heard of a program called Mailwasher which apparently
> generates a bounce in response to spam in an attempt to convince the
> spammers the address in invalid.

That [MW bogus bounce] is a really really bad idea which is entirely
misrepresented by the developers of MW mailwasher and which should be
disabled because it is both abusive, against the AUP/TOS [acceptable
use/ terms of service] of your provider, and can cause you problems with
your provider, with blocklisting services and can even endanger your
account with your mail provider.

> I am a bit sceptical of this since
> a) I doubt whether the spammers care about bounces

99.9% of the time the bounce never goes toward the spamsource -- only in
the case of straightup spam.

> and b) I worry if
> such bounces could be detected as being false and thus validate the
> address.

A bogus bounce can be determined to be from your IP.  A bogus bounce is
'designed' to try to pretend to show that a particular address had no
such mailbox, so the recipient address is definitely included in the
bounce.

> Any comments on this would be appreciated.

Don't use MW's or any other app which performs bogus bounces.  The vast
majority of spams have bogus From which From is typically derived from
the same lists as the recipient spammees.  The bogus From is
occasionally 'manufactured' or not real as a part of the social
engineering of a spam, such as a girl's name on some porn spam or a
bank's name on a phish -- but usually bogus From is a regular address.

When you bogus bounce, you are sending a newmail to the bogus From
address, which address is not only innocent of the spam, but may be a
reporter who reports abusive unsolicited mail such as bogus bounces or a
spamtrap which also reports.  Your abusive bogus bounce has your IP
address in its headers and it is also a forgery of your mail provider's
role accounts.

The rare instance in which a bogus bounce might have any positive effect
whatsoever is so uncommon as to be not worth talking about, to prevent
any confusion over the issue.

Do *not* bogus bounce.  In fact, there is so much wrong with the MW
developers' attitude that I am 'against' MW even tho' it has other
positive features which are not its bogus bounce capabilities.  You can
use other mail applications to avoid downloading mail from the server,
and most people would be better off using a filter which is able to
access the entire mail rather than trying to delete from the server.
That subject is a more complicated and different discussion from the
issue of bogus bouncing.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin