At 10:11 PM 12/19/01 -0500, John O'Flynn wrote the following:
>I've been looking closely at a program called Mail Washer, at
>www.mailwasher.net but haven't used it. Do any members of the list have
>experience of it or anything similar? Are programs that bounce unwanted
>messages an effective way of combating spam? I assume that this is why
>Peter's acquaintance is receiving "a flood of bounced emails."
Bouncing e-mail is NOT an effective way of preventing spam. In fact. it
contributes to the problem, that is, more junk mail being sent around the
Internet.
If you are using an e-mail address extraction program like Email Extractor
and a spam program like Platinum Mailer then you don't care about bounced
e-mail as they all go to the trash can. Other spammers who don't run their
own e-mail extraction program buy a list of e-mail address ("99 million
e-mail address on CD for only $39.95!") and send spam out at the rate of
25,000 addresses per minute! They really don't care if your e-mail address
is invalid because they are to busy sending out spam.
In addition, if the person knows anything about e-mail headers, then they
can tell a real bounce from a "fake" bounce.
Save your time by reporting spammers and don't worry about fake bounces.
I think the problem Peter's friend is having can be described this way.
"Joe Spammer" grabs a valid e-mail address like "John O'Flynn" and sends
out 100,000 e-mails. 1000 of these bounce due to bad addressing and the
bounces are sent to "John O'Flynn" rather than back to "Joe Spammer".
--
Gerry Boyd
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