--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nathalie Collins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi: > > I was listening to Radio National this morning, and they were > saying how easy it is to forge a return email address. > > I was wondering--could I forge a "bounce back" message to spammers > from my ISP saying that my address is no longer valid? Would that > get me off their lists? Has anyone out there ever tried this? > > Just an idea I thought I would throw out there... > > Nathalie
Hi Nathalie, There are actually quite a few PC based programs which do this for you automatically, mailwasher being one I think. There are probably some for macs as well, I'm not sure. I am not a big fan of these for 2 reasons 1) The email address that a spam message comes from is very often faked. Thus, if you bounce mail back to it, it won't get to the sender anyway. 2) It just creates a whole pile of extra mail flowing around the internet. I am 'postmaster' for nearly all of our mail servers here, and that means I get all the bouncebacks which the mailer-daemon (ie, the virtual user that sends you an email when one that you sent was delayed, or couldn't be delivered (1000's per day). The problem I have is that if you fake a message from the ISP that your address doesn't exist, here is the path it follows. 1) Email from your computer from 'Postmaster' eg mailer- [EMAIL PROTECTED] to the spammers 'From' address. eg [EMAIL PROTECTED] to say that [EMAIL PROTECTED] does not exist. 2) Hotmail rejects that message because [EMAIL PROTECTED] does not exist. This bounces back to [EMAIL PROTECTED] , which is poor old me. So unfortunately, it doesn't achieve much except generate more email. That is why the spammer rarely, if not ever, sends from an email address that they check Well, thats my opinion anyway. Regards Trevor Lee Highway 1 Internet Solutions
