OT: Mailwasher - Bouncing?

[Lurker]

Doesn't Mailwasher's 'bouncing' verify the sender's address as a good address and thereby guaranteeing more spam? If so, why bounce it? If
not, what does Mailwasher do, keep your good addy for its discretionary use whenever and however it chooses? Perhaps just selling it? Just wondering about the Mailwasher bounce feature. TIA for any enlightment on the subject.

 

[donut]

Doesn't Mailwasher's 'bouncing' verify the sender's address as a good
address and thereby guaranteeing more spam? If so, why bounce it? If
not, what does Mailwasher do, keep your good addy for its
discretionary use whenever and however it chooses? Perhaps just
selling it? Just wondering about the Mailwasher bounce feature. TIA
for any enlightment on the subject.

Yes, I believe that is true. Though, I would doubt that most spammers, if
any, ever read incoming mail in the accounts they use to blast others.

That "gotcha back!" feels good but probably accomplishes nothing.

The best thing would be to launch a mailbomb attack, but then you would be
the one in the wrong. ;(

 

[George]

Doesn't Mailwasher's 'bouncing' verify the sender's address as a good address and thereby guaranteeing more spam? If so, why bounce it? If
not, what does Mailwasher do, keep your good addy for its discretionary use whenever and however it chooses? Perhaps just selling it? Just wondering about the Mailwasher bounce feature. TIA for any enlightment on the subject.

Most spammers don't use an active reply address so the bounce feature
would just add to server congestion.

Some do use an active address, not theirs though. It's some poor bloke
"down the road" who has nothing whatsoever to do with the spam and he's
wondering what all the bounce messages and spam complaints are about.

If they did use their own reply address then I imagine they'd be able to
suss a fake bounce so it would confirm your address is in use. I don't
take the chance anyway and switch off that feature of Mailwasher.

 

[Bill Bradshaw]

You might want to go here and join the Mailwasher forums.

http://www.computercops.biz/

 

[John Fitzsimons]

Doesn't Mailwasher's 'bouncing' verify the sender's address as a good address and thereby guaranteeing more spam?

< snip >

The point of the "bounce" is that it is NOT from you. It pretends to
be an undeliverable notice.

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
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/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
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v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[Nicolaas Hawkins]

< snip >

The point of the "bounce" is that it is NOT from you. It pretends to
be an undeliverable notice.

Regards, John.

John, PLEASE! Don't obfuscate the issue with FACTS!

 

[Paul Bowlay]

Doesn't Mailwasher's 'bouncing' verify the sender's address as a good address
and thereby guaranteeing more spam?

Exactly why I don't use it anymore. Plus, it added to my bandwidth costs by sending
out its bogus bounce messages -- it's economically stupid to do that if you pay by
the megabyte (as some ISPs do).

 

[Howard]

The point of the "bounce" is that it is NOT from you. It pretends to
be an undeliverable notice.

I can confirm no only what John says, but that the bouce message is
indisinguisable from a real bouce message. The spammer must get several
thousand bounces off on each spam run, mostly from dead email addys.

And I have discovered the the real benefit for me for this feature relates
to false postives.
It tells my friends and family their mail hasn't gotten through, so they
ring me and I can add their email to my whitelist. This is a great feature!

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

I can confirm no only what John says, but that the bouce message
is indisinguisable from a real bouce message. The spammer must get
several thousand bounces off on each spam run, mostly from dead
email addys.

The spammer never gets them. People like me get them, since spammers
forge their From headers with addresses they have picked up, such as
mine. Please stop forwarding your spam to random strangers in the form
of fake bounce messages.

 

[DC]

I can confirm no only what John says, but that the bouce message is
indisinguisable from a real bouce message. The spammer must get several
thousand bounces off on each spam run, mostly from dead email addys.

And I have discovered the the real benefit for me for this feature relates
to false postives.
It tells my friends and family their mail hasn't gotten through, so they
ring me and I can add their email to my whitelist. This is a great feature!

On the surface, it might *seem* like a great feature. What it really
amounts to is a pointless waste of finite resources in the name of
combatting another. It effectively compounds the problem 2+ fold.

Don't use the bounce feature. Please.

 

[Happywithit]

You might want to go here and join the Mailwasher forums.

http://www.computercops.biz/ -- <Bill>

Brought to you from beautiful Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, Alaska. N 53°
51.140' W 166° 30.228' (WGS 84)

I've been using Mailwasher Pro for some time. I agree with all that
bouncing is a waste of time. The best way to use mailwasher is not to
fully configuring the bounce figure. I have my settings almost complete.
But since my ISP requires authentication to mail out, the bouncing
feature isn't complete (grayed out). I have the auto-delete blacklisted
feature on (not the bounce). So all I have to do is blacklist whatever
is new and process. Takes all of 30 secs to update my list. All I really
get nowadays is the mail I want to see. I'm using 3 addy's so I don't
feel 30secs is too much time out of my day

 

[John Fitzsimons]

John, PLEASE! Don't obfuscate the issue with FACTS!

Sorry. I must watch that. :-(

Did you know we had a power cut here ? Yep. Strange but true. About
six months ago. Thought everyone in this newsgroup needed to know
that important info.

 

[John Fitzsimons]

John Fitzsimons wrote:

I can confirm no only what John says, but that the bouce message is
indisinguisable from a real bouce message. The spammer must get several
thousand bounces off on each spam run, mostly from dead email addys.

And I have discovered the the real benefit for me for this feature relates
to false postives.
It tells my friends and family their mail hasn't gotten through, so they
ring me and I can add their email to my whitelist. This is a great feature!

Yes, good point. It can also help one get off mailing lists where the
sender uses a legitimate sending address. Often such people then cull
their "list" to avoid future bounces.

IMO bouncing "selectively" is probably better than always, or never.

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.aspects.org.au/index.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[Priestes]

feature!

Yes, good point. It can also help one get off mailing lists where the
sender uses a legitimate sending address. Often such people then cull
their "list" to avoid future bounces.

IMO bouncing "selectively" is probably better than always, or never.

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.aspects.org.au/index.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

Has anyone taken into consideration that if they read their isp terms and
conditions that they are setting themselves up for actually losing their isp
due to bouncing violates most mailservers terms and conditions, it ranks up
with spamming, it causes more loads on a server by bouncing???

Priestes

 

[mike ring]

I have, too.

Me, too. I think the chances are a lot greater than being struck by
lightning or approached by one of the British Broadcorpin Castration's
famed hordes of audience reviewers.

So please turn off the bouncer

Mike R

Mike R

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Priestes wrote:
[SNIP]

Has anyone taken into consideration that if they read their isp terms and
conditions that they are setting themselves up for actually losing their isp
due to bouncing violates most mailservers terms and conditions, it ranks up
with spamming, it causes more loads on a server by bouncing???

Priestes

My ISP allows me to bounce messages.

If yours doesn't, perhaps you need to tell them to catch up with the
rest of us.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[George]

Priestes wrote:
[SNIP]

Has anyone taken into consideration that if they read their isp terms and
conditions that they are setting themselves up for actually losing their isp
due to bouncing violates most mailservers terms and conditions, it ranks up
with spamming, it causes more loads on a server by bouncing???

Priestes

My ISP allows me to bounce messages.

If yours doesn't, perhaps you need to tell them to catch up with the
rest of us.

I'd say it's your ISP that needs to catch up. Bouncing messages just
adds to the problem.

 

[Gary R. Schmidt]

Priestes wrote:
[SNIP]

Has anyone taken into consideration that if they read their isp terms and
conditions that they are setting themselves up for actually losing their isp
due to bouncing violates most mailservers terms and conditions, it ranks up
with spamming, it causes more loads on a server by bouncing???

Priestes

My ISP allows me to bounce messages.

If yours doesn't, perhaps you need to tell them to catch up with the
rest of us.

I'd say it's your ISP that needs to catch up. Bouncing messages just
adds to the problem.

So what should be done with mail that arrives at domain "x.y.z" for a
user "abc" who does not exist?

It bounces. It's RFC 2821 that covers this, or its supercedents.

Spammers who use generated mailing lists are going to cause bounces
anyway, so why shouldn't we do the same? As someone else pointed out,
if ISPs are hammered by (possibly invalid) failure to deliver messages,
it _might_ cause them to do something about SPAM.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

 

[George]

Priestes wrote:
[SNIP]

Has anyone taken into consideration that if they read their isp terms and
conditions that they are setting themselves up for actually losing their isp
due to bouncing violates most mailservers terms and conditions, it ranks up
with spamming, it causes more loads on a server by bouncing???

Priestes

My ISP allows me to bounce messages.

If yours doesn't, perhaps you need to tell them to catch up with the
rest of us.

I'd say it's your ISP that needs to catch up. Bouncing messages just
adds to the problem.

So what should be done with mail that arrives at domain "x.y.z" for a
user "abc" who does not exist?

It bounces. It's RFC 2821 that covers this, or its supercedents.

Spammers who use generated mailing lists are going to cause bounces
anyway, so why shouldn't we do the same? As someone else pointed out,
if ISPs are hammered by (possibly invalid) failure to deliver messages,
it _might_ cause them to do something about SPAM.

It's adding to the problem not helping it for a start and if as I have
read it is not uncommon for an innocent person's email address to be used
as the reply to then your bounce would be a spam to him/her. Still it's
up to each individual how they combat spam.

Many ISPs are doing something by adding spam filters.

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Spammers who use generated mailing lists are going to cause bounces
anyway, so why shouldn't we do the same? As someone else pointed out,

So your argument is, essentially, "spammers waste bandwidth, so we
should, too." Pardon me while I don't subscribe to that logic.