Bouncing Seems to Work

  • Thread starter Thread starter OldWiseMan
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OldWiseMan

I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here on
bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
 
OldWiseMan said:
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here on
bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...

I trust you realize that a lot of spam has fake FROM addresses, so
bouncing messages to the apparent sender will in fact simply bombard
innocent people with your spam.
 
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here on
bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...

Why don't you subscribe to an Antispam service. Most ISP's offer some
sort of serverside filtering nowadays. My ISP uses F-Prot AVES which
is Antivirus and Antispam. Works very well and has a nice web
interface. There is a photo of this on my website on the entry for
7-March-2005 called 'Another sober day - maybe?'
--

Regards, |Windows XP Professional SP2
Ian Kenefick |NOD32 Antivirus system [resident]
http://www.ik-cs.com |AVP 3.5 - [On Demand]
no snake oil here! |Sygate Personal Firewall 5 professional
|Forte Agent 2
|Eudora 6.2 (Paid)
 
OldWiseMan said:
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions
here on bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off
recently with spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a
home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact
and I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily
dropped back to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still
improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...


As a recipient of your unsolicited bounce, your e-mail is spam to me.
It was never solicited and was never in response to an e-mail from me
because I never sent you one. Your bounces to the bogus From addresses
is considered spam - so you have chosen to become part of the problem!

Yeah, your spam waned in the last few weeks. So did you actually
compare spam statistics to check if spam was on the rise, has remained
the same, or has waned over that same period of time? More likely is
that spam has waned so what you received also waned regardless of your
bouncing. Take a look at
http://www.commtouch.com/Site/ResearchLab/statistics.asp. Was the
descrease in spam also when you did your "test"? Even if spam was
rising, it may be waning to your e-mail provider's domain, so did you
check with their statistics, if available, to see if spam had waned on
your e-mail domain? Your argument presumes that the level of spam
targeting your account will remain at a steady rate. Even while spam is
increasing, the impact on a particular mailbox fluctuates wildly.

Should I ever receive any fake bounces from you for e-mails that I never
delivered, I will be reporting you to your e-mail provider as an abusive
and spamming sender and hopefully they will kill your account. There is
a good chance that your ISP does not permit you to run servers on your
host that are Internet enabled, so you running a product that spews out
fake bounces (i.e., they don't originate from your ISP's mail server)
will be a violation of their Terms of Services for your *personal*
account with them. Even if it works as a solution for you (but your
presumptions were flawed), you become a problem to "innocents" getting
bombarded with your "spam bounces".
 
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here on
bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...

Bouncing doesnt work. The decrease in spam is a global statistic and
has nothing to do with your actions. In fact, you mearly contribute to
the global pandemic that is SPAM. So no thanks to you I get even more
SPAM.
--

Regards, |Windows XP Professional SP2
Ian Kenefick |NOD32 Antivirus system [resident]
http://www.ik-cs.com |AVP 3.5 - [On Demand]
no snake oil here! |Sygate Personal Firewall 5 professional
|Forte Agent 2
|Eudora 6.2 (Paid)
 
OldWiseMan said:
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here on
bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...
*Bouncing* doesn't sound so good to begin with and how it is possible for
someone to subscribe to such a tactic, escapes me.
Try to correct your mistake in a hurry, OldWiseMan.
 
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions
here on bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off
recently with spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a
home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact
and I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily
dropped back to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still
improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...
Since the From: address on pretty much all spam and all viruses is fake,
all you are doing is harassing innocent third parties. You should lose your
account for it.
 
I use Mailwasher as well, but have never used the bounce option. Given all
of the comments being made here, which make seemingly obvious sense, has
anyone communicated with Mailwasher makers to suggest removing the option. I
decided not to use it because I thought it would verify that my address was
valid, but there must be lots of innocent, well meaning people (presumably
like Oldwiseman) who see a facility and presume it's OK.
 
C A Upsdell said:
I trust you realize that a lot of spam has fake FROM addresses, so
bouncing messages to the apparent sender will in fact simply bombard
innocent people with your spam.
Click to expand...

The same with automated returned messages saying an e-mail containing a
virus has received with the From address.

All the ones I get at my Hotmail account at the moment are filtered into
the Junk Mail folder by Microsoft's SmartScreen technology. When I empty
this folder, I am asked to confirm if the messages really are junk. So I
have to do a little extra work, if I want to be honest.

I think a lot of people at Hotmail just mark them as junk, without first
checking them out. After a while all messages, including legit messages
from these mail servers, that send these messages, automatically get
marked as junk.

Unfortunate for the poor customers at the sites that send out these
messages reporting e-mail virus. Hotmail is a very, very big e-mail
provider.
 
OldWiseMan said:
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here
on bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...

There are two separate arguments here.

1) Does bouncing reduce the spam you receive ?

All I'm saying is that on my limited trial so far, it appears to do so. I've
checked the spam tracking sites mentioned above and my own reduction seems
much greater than the general trend; again, I realise that this trial of
mine is only a limited one but the results so far would make me at least
question the conventional wisdom that bouncing has little or no impact.


2) Is bouncing a responsible way of dealing with it?

Previously, I would have been inclined to say yes but to be honest, I hadn't
really given it a great lot of thought as I believed the 'responsible'
argument was irrelevent if bouncing didn't work anyway. Now that it *seems*
to work, I have to think more deeply about the 'responsible' part.

I take on board the points that are made above, like everyone here, I hate
spam/junk mail with a passsion and the last thing I want to do is add to the
problem by pushing that mail out to innocent people. The only argument I
could perhaps use is that if somone else's email address has been hijacked
my a spammer, then that's their problem, not mine and getting email bounced
back to them might at least get them to pay attention to the fact that it
has been hijacked. That sounds selfish but isn't meant to be.

BTW, I have read here before about people setting up their mailserver to
reject certain types of email. What is the difference? In this case does the
email not get returned and just disappear into cyberspace?
 
OldWiseMan said:
The only argument I could perhaps use is that if somone else's
email address has been hijacked my a spammer, then that's their
problem, not mine and getting email bounced back to them might at
least get them to pay attention to the fact that it has been
hijacked. That sounds selfish but isn't meant to be.
Click to expand...

You are forgetting that spammers *routinely* use one of their victim's
addresses to send a batch of spam. They use an address right out of
the list to mark their place in the list. The owner of that address is
an even bigger victim, and does not deserve further bounces from you,
in addition to all those s/he is going to get from all the bad
addresses in the spammer's list.

The hijacked person you mention is NOT at fault.

Be kind. Don't bounce.
 
Why don't you subscribe to an Antispam service. Most ISP's offer some
sort of serverside filtering nowadays.
Click to expand...

I basically don't trust ISP filters, prefer to use my own.
 
Vanguard said:
news:[email protected]...
Click to expand...
There is a good chance that your ISP does not permit you to run servers on
your host that are Internet enabled, so you running a product that spews
out fake bounces (i.e., they don't originate from your ISP's mail server)
will be a violation of their Terms of Services for your *personal* account
with them. Even if it works as a solution for you (but your presumptions
were flawed), you become a problem to "innocents" getting bombarded with
your "spam bounces".
Click to expand...

I'm not running a mailserver on this account, it's my ISP's server I'm
getting them through.
 
I use Mailwasher as well, but have never used the bounce option. Given all
of the comments being made here, which make seemingly obvious sense, has
anyone communicated with Mailwasher makers to suggest removing the option.
I decided not to use it because I thought it would verify that my address
was valid, but there must be lots of innocent, well meaning people
(presumably like Oldwiseman) who see a facility and presume it's OK.
Click to expand...

When I first started using Mailwasher, I was bouncing until I read a
previous discussion here and stopped it. I got the feeling that my spam was
increasing after that but thought it was just down to increasing spam in
general.

More in a fit of exasperation than anything else, I went back to bouncing
and was surprised to find that it did *seem* to reduce the level of spam I
received.
 
The hijacked person you mention is NOT at fault.

Be kind. Don't bounce.
Click to expand...

Amen.

--
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck sonic net.
 
OldWiseMan said:
I'm not running a mailserver on this account, it's my ISP's server I'm
getting them through.
Click to expand...

But you are "serving" the bounces. When the ISP does the bouncing it
does it in a timely manner and modern spamming software can tell the
difference. So "your" bounces may just be confirming that you are a real
valid address <cha-ching $$$> and are running some fake bouncing
utility.
 
The same with automated returned messages saying an e-mail containing a
virus has received with the From address.
Click to expand...
[snip]

At least one anti-virus company has a clue:

"Why (some) anti-virus companies are to blame for the recent e-mail flood."
http://www.f-prot.com/news/gen_news/030910_open_letter.html
"Yes, (some) antivirus companies are spammers."
http://www.f-prot.com/news/gen_news/040130_open_letter.html

On the other hand (or maybe tentacle in this case) McAfee's SpamKiller
is another abuse amplifier, not only reporting spam to the wrong place
and reporting replies to the bogus spam reports as allegedly more spam
but also forging MAILER-DAEMON at the user's ISP as the sender of fake
bounces to the (frequently forged when in spam) "From:" address in the
messages that it rightly or wrongly decides is spam needing reporting.

The MAILER-DAEMON forgery is enough to get a user's account terminated
at some ISPs.

This makes me wonder how good McAfee's anti-virus software could
possibly be.
 
Roger Wilco said:
But you are "serving" the bounces. When the ISP does the bouncing it
does it in a timely manner and modern spamming software can tell the
difference. So "your" bounces may just be confirming that you are a
real
valid address <cha-ching $$$> and are running some fake bouncing
utility.
Click to expand...


Exactly. The bounces issued by the client who doesn't bounce until they
happen to poll the mailbox is NOT the same as a bounce issued by the
receiving mail server. And, in fact, using Mailwasher to issue *BOGUS*
bouncebacks *IS* running a mail server in that you are definitely trying
to pretend that you are the mail server issuing the bouncebacks.

While it is possible for spam software to determine that your bogus NDR
(non-delivery report) did NOT come from the receiving mail server, it is
not likely than many spammers would bother. They would to run a mail
server that accepted inbound e-mails. That puts them at risk for
exposure, retaliation, and disconnect. So it is possible to validate
e-mail accounts based on receiving bogus NDRs from clients as
differentiated from getting NDRs from the ISP's mail server to which the
e-mail was delivered but it is not a likely scenario.

The primary problem is you sending out bogus NDRs is that you hit
innocents with your "bounce spam" for e-mails they never sent. You also
consume even more bandwidth for bounce messages that are never received
by the spammer. For poorly coded e-mail client that issues bounces, you
can end up causing a flood of bouncing messages between two mail
servers. Mailwasher, I have been told, uses a null valued Return-Path
header which means the receiving mail server will not issue an NDR of
its own in response to your bogus NDR sent to a non-existent mailbox
(which would then have you bounce their NDR with another bogus NDR that
they bounce that you bounce and ad nauseum). Mailwasher is well aware
of the stupidity in issuing bogus NDRs, but it is too good a lure to get
newbies to buy their product. Them including the option doesn't mean it
is a good option. Bogus NDRs should be sent only when there is
reasonable expectation that it gets delivered to the actual sender of
the instigating e-mail. That means YOU have to interrogate the headers
to determine the likelihood that you can identify the correct sender
rather than bogus values inserted by a spammer. However, users enabling
this bounce feature are too lazy to bother looking at the headers; if
they did, they wouldn't need the automated bounceback feature, anyway.

You don't hurt the spammer by sending bogus NDRs. It's like using a
shotgun at the campfire to swat mosquitos which you rarely hit but you
manage to slaughter all the campers nearby: an ineffective and
irresponsible solution with lots of innocent casualties. Say a spammer
issues one million spams per day (which is not impossible and even
higher rates are possible) and all of them have you listed in the From
header. After all, the spammer is certainly not going to list their own
e-mail address. Say only 10% of those e-mails get delivered (i.e., make
it past server-side filters and also hit valid e-mail accounts). That's
100,000 delivered copies of their spam. Say only 1% of those recipients
used Mailwasher's bounceback feature. That will be 1,000 NDRs delivered
to your mailbox for an e-mail that you never sent! I had one guy that
in one day got nailed with around 3,500 NDRs for an e-mail that he never
sent just because the spammer used his e-mail address in the From or
Reply-To headers. There is no intellience employed as to where the NDR
gets sent. If all those Mailwasher users are going to abuse my mailbox
with their misdirected *spam* (because, after all, they were NOT the
result of an e-mail that I sent so all of them are unsolicited and come
from USERS rather than real mail servers), they can expect the same
"courtesy" in return - by getting their accounts canned!

Your solution should not inflict other users with the negative side
effects of your "solution". Flush your own turds rather than spew them
back out on the Internet and hitting innocents with them.
 
OldWiseMan said:
I have been using MailWasher for a yera or so. Following discussions here
on bouncing, I stopped doing it but I got really pissed off recently with
spam/junk/virus emails running at 180-200 per day on a home account.

I decided to try bouncing for a few weeks to see if it had any impact and
I've found that over the last month such emails have steadily dropped back
to about 100 per day, a reduction of over 40% and still improving.

So bouncing does seem to work - at least for me!
Click to expand...

Your perceived reduction is a result of:

a. natural reduction in spam that occurs; or

b. (more likely) the result of MailWasher learning and therfore no longer
showing you the messages that it automatically marks as spam and deletes. I
ran MailWasher for a while too, and had the exact same results, except when
you actually investigate you find that there is still the same amount of
spam coming in, just that MailWasher has learnt and no longer shows it to
you.

Not much use bouncing messages to addresses that don't exist, is it!!
 
OldWiseMan said:
I basically don't trust ISP filters, prefer to use my own.
Click to expand...


Passive filtering is okay as your solution does not inflict anyone else
the the negative effects of your solution. Reactive filtering (i.e.,
bogus bounces) is wrong simply because there is no intelligence employed
in routing your bounce so it targets the real sender. The From,
Reply-To, and other headers are bogus when the e-mail originates from a
spammer, so obviously using those headers to route your bounce messages
mean that you never hit the spammer and instead bombard innocents with
YOUR spam.

In fact, once a Mailwasher is known that uses automatic bouncing, a
spammer or malcontent can actually abuse your mailbox and irritate lots
of innocents to the point that they must report you to get your account
killed to stop the bombardment of your turds that you fling at them. A
simple case is that a spammer enters (e-mail address removed),
(e-mail address removed), or some other defined and common e-mail management
account at your ISP or e-mail provider. They send you thousands of
e-mails that are guaranteed to have Mailwasher trigger on them as spam.
Your Mailwasher then sends out thousands of NDRs (non-delivery reports)
to the admin for your ISP or e-mail service. Their mailbox gets filled
with all your bogus NDRs. You don't think they'll take action against
you for spewing out thousands of bogus NDRs, especially if it is a
violation of the Terms of Service, all of which are themselves spam
because they were unsolicited responses to e-mails never sent by that
admin. So the spammer makes you blast someone else with all your "spam
bounces" who definitely has the power to kill your account. You become
such an irritant to one recipient receiving thousands of your bogus
NDRs, or from thousands of innocents reporting your spam which gets your
domain to get blacklisted, that your ISP has no choice but to kill your
account.

Spewing out bounces without any intelligent routing of them so they are
misdirected at innocents is an irresponsible solution. Just configure
Mailwasher to delete them.
 
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