View Single Post
Old 04-23-2003, 02:40 PM   #1 (permalink)
MMM-A
Upright
 
Bouncing Spam... Does it help? What's your experience?

I've been experimenting with being aggressive with spam by bouncing emails back.

I'm not talking about BLOCKING email (which amounts to just filtering spam out before it gets in your inbox), but, rather BOUNCING: actively trying to send a message back to the spammer to fake that your email address is not valid.

Originally, I was using an old, no longer supported program called BSM found at: ftp://ftp.pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/files/Apr2002/BSM18.zip

Later I discovered a more current program at: http://www.mailwasher.net

After a month of paying attention to the job, it seems to be paying off. I've gone from 20 or 30 spams a day to 1, 2, or none.

Now that some of the virus scanner companies are offering spam management (bouncing), too, I expect more people are trying it.

So... the BIG question: Does it help? Not help? Please relate your experience so far.

(By the way, I've found that running my own SMTP server allows me to delete bounces that don't have valid email addresses without my ISP's email daemon bounces back to me.... I've been using inframail for years (www.infradig.com). It's free (the personal version), but I don't, necessarily recommend it because it's NOT for the novice. It'd take a sysadmin to set it up and maintain it. Search for a more user friendly program if you want to try this.)

Last edited by MMM-A; 04-23-2003 at 03:46 PM..
MMM-A is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360