To bounce or not to bounce?
even ants need some lovin'
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Join Date: Jan 2001
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To bounce or not to bounce?
Theres a debate in a local newsgroup as to the merits of using Mailwasher's bounce facility (returning spam to the sender as being undeliverable).
Actually, I enjoyed thinking the moron spammers having their own spam filling their inbox until one newsgroup contributor pointed out that the spammers hijack many genuine addresses. Thus, the hundreds- maybe thousands-of spam emails I've bounced since using Mailwasher have merely filled the inboxes of poor innocent folk like myself and unthinkingly I too have added to the scourge of spam.
The b@stard spammers are sending me nearly 100 a day to my main address. So your comments on bouncing which I have stopped doing!!
Actually, I enjoyed thinking the moron spammers having their own spam filling their inbox until one newsgroup contributor pointed out that the spammers hijack many genuine addresses. Thus, the hundreds- maybe thousands-of spam emails I've bounced since using Mailwasher have merely filled the inboxes of poor innocent folk like myself and unthinkingly I too have added to the scourge of spam.
The b@stard spammers are sending me nearly 100 a day to my main address. So your comments on bouncing which I have stopped doing!!
Same here. I use MW to bounce unsolicited newsletters, adverts etc (rather than the 'click here to unsubscribe' option which merely validates your email address). The Copy DVD, Viagra etc spam just gets the MW delete.
Join Date: Sep 1998
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I used to bounce spam but after reading a bit about the % of originators that get their own back being very low - only 1 or 2% - I came to the conclusion that bouncing is probably a waste of bandwidth.
I'm a beta tester for Mailwasher and I get to play with unreleased versions. One that's coming up is very nice. It lets you auto delete from your ISP's mail server mails from senders on your personal blacklist, from senders on remote free blacklists, from senders on remote subscribed blacklists and from a database of spam and senders under development by the Mailwasher folk. If you want to auto bounce them, you can.
If you wish, you can tick a box so that you never see the stuff.
Friendly (of course), doubtful and unidentified mail is still presented to you for manual sorting.
I have been using the betas for months and have not had a false positive (ie, a false indication of spam). I get 200 spams a day. MW has cut that down to about 20. Fabulous, simply fabulous. It is comprehensively THE BEST spam tool I have ever tried.
www.firetrust.com for details.
AA
I'm a beta tester for Mailwasher and I get to play with unreleased versions. One that's coming up is very nice. It lets you auto delete from your ISP's mail server mails from senders on your personal blacklist, from senders on remote free blacklists, from senders on remote subscribed blacklists and from a database of spam and senders under development by the Mailwasher folk. If you want to auto bounce them, you can.
If you wish, you can tick a box so that you never see the stuff.
Friendly (of course), doubtful and unidentified mail is still presented to you for manual sorting.
I have been using the betas for months and have not had a false positive (ie, a false indication of spam). I get 200 spams a day. MW has cut that down to about 20. Fabulous, simply fabulous. It is comprehensively THE BEST spam tool I have ever tried.
www.firetrust.com for details.
AA
Plastic PPRuNer
No, don't bounce 'em. I used to, until I realised that the originators usually don't get the bounces and don't take any notice if the do anyway.
Also it further clogs the net with bouncing email and doesn't help my poor 'ol ISP at all.
Roger all the comments about Mailwasher(registered) - I used to sit for ages while all that cr@p downloaded - now I can just delete it of my ISP with ittle bother.
Ausatco - that new version of MW looks very sexy - any idea when they will release it?
This spam story is really getting worring for the net - I've now gone up to 40-60 pieces of garbage/day and it seems to be increasing. My ISP blocks as much as it reasonably can and it seems has plans to allow users to upload their own junk-senders list for their mailbox. Legislation doesn't seem to have much chance of working, 'cos the spammers will just move to servers in Outer Mongolia. M$ has plans to change the whole structure of email which I naturally view with considerable suspicion.
It seems that some companies are going back to faxes because of worries that important emails will be missed in the deluge of trash or inadvertently filtered - pity.
On the positive side, where seem to be indications that as more and more people and ISP's install spam filters that eventually the rate of return on spam will fall below a useful margin and the practice will die out. One can always hope!
The opensource PopFile looks interesting as a naive Bayesian filter that learns as it goes, but MW is good enough for the moment.
Also it further clogs the net with bouncing email and doesn't help my poor 'ol ISP at all.
Roger all the comments about Mailwasher(registered) - I used to sit for ages while all that cr@p downloaded - now I can just delete it of my ISP with ittle bother.
Ausatco - that new version of MW looks very sexy - any idea when they will release it?
This spam story is really getting worring for the net - I've now gone up to 40-60 pieces of garbage/day and it seems to be increasing. My ISP blocks as much as it reasonably can and it seems has plans to allow users to upload their own junk-senders list for their mailbox. Legislation doesn't seem to have much chance of working, 'cos the spammers will just move to servers in Outer Mongolia. M$ has plans to change the whole structure of email which I naturally view with considerable suspicion.
It seems that some companies are going back to faxes because of worries that important emails will be missed in the deluge of trash or inadvertently filtered - pity.
On the positive side, where seem to be indications that as more and more people and ISP's install spam filters that eventually the rate of return on spam will fall below a useful margin and the practice will die out. One can always hope!
The opensource PopFile looks interesting as a naive Bayesian filter that learns as it goes, but MW is good enough for the moment.
The Oracle
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I bounce them.
My reasoning, two things will happen:
1) If it is from the spammer's address, he will get it back at him.
2) If it is from someone with a Virus, Trojen, Worm, getting bounced emails gives them a hint that all is not right with their computer.
Take Care,
Richard
My reasoning, two things will happen:
1) If it is from the spammer's address, he will get it back at him.
2) If it is from someone with a Virus, Trojen, Worm, getting bounced emails gives them a hint that all is not right with their computer.
Take Care,
Richard
I read of a spam filter (Under development? Proposed?) that uses a user/P2P shared database of spam mail. The more a piece of spam gets marked as such by users more aggressive the autodelete is.
The spam gets its card marked almost as soon as it hits a participant. Effectively a realtime blacklist.
Is a beta release of the new MW available?
The spam gets its card marked almost as soon as it hits a participant. Effectively a realtime blacklist.
Is a beta release of the new MW available?
Last edited by Tinstaafl; 2nd Nov 2003 at 05:45.
Join Date: Sep 1998
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Mac,
Release is due quite soon. In fact it's supposed to have been released already, but beta testers asked for some functionality that hadn't been programmed and that's set it back a bit. But not much, according to the guy who coordinates us.
It's worth the wait. I can't emphasise enough how good this is
Tinny,
Would love to share it with you, but beta distribution of this version is limited via an unpublished website. We get notified by email of the URL when an update is available. It is a condition of our participation that we not distribute it ourselves. Sorry.
All,
You can enhance Mailwasher's detection and filtering considerably by downloading an extensive set of pre-defined filters. They're here. Also, the Mailwasher support pages and FAQ are extremely good at Firetrust.
Sorry Ant, I've hijacked your thread
AA
Release is due quite soon. In fact it's supposed to have been released already, but beta testers asked for some functionality that hadn't been programmed and that's set it back a bit. But not much, according to the guy who coordinates us.
It's worth the wait. I can't emphasise enough how good this is
Tinny,
Would love to share it with you, but beta distribution of this version is limited via an unpublished website. We get notified by email of the URL when an update is available. It is a condition of our participation that we not distribute it ourselves. Sorry.
All,
You can enhance Mailwasher's detection and filtering considerably by downloading an extensive set of pre-defined filters. They're here. Also, the Mailwasher support pages and FAQ are extremely good at Firetrust.
Sorry Ant, I've hijacked your thread
AA
Join Date: Apr 2002
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Please don't bounce SPAM.
As a former mail systems administrator I've had to deal
with spam, and i still follow the antics of the SPAMSCUM.
It is current pratice for spammers to use forged
"from:" addresses. Sometimes even addresses of people
who have showed to be against the spamming pratices
of the spammer.
This has been called a "joe-job". (see:
Def. of "Joe-job")
If you bounce such messages you are just directing
a message to someone who is not at all responsible
for the spam.
Now just imagine that someone has done a "joe-job" on
you ... Guess what happens if even a small percentage
of the recipients decide to bounce the message.
You get an avallanche of e-mails, at quite a big co$t to
you and technicall dificulties to you provider!
Sometimes these "joe-jobs" are planned as denial-of-service
attacks. By bouncing the message you are helping the
attacker.
So, please, don't bounce SPAM.
Thanks
CS-DNA
As a former mail systems administrator I've had to deal
with spam, and i still follow the antics of the SPAMSCUM.
It is current pratice for spammers to use forged
"from:" addresses. Sometimes even addresses of people
who have showed to be against the spamming pratices
of the spammer.
This has been called a "joe-job". (see:
Def. of "Joe-job")
If you bounce such messages you are just directing
a message to someone who is not at all responsible
for the spam.
Now just imagine that someone has done a "joe-job" on
you ... Guess what happens if even a small percentage
of the recipients decide to bounce the message.
You get an avallanche of e-mails, at quite a big co$t to
you and technicall dificulties to you provider!
Sometimes these "joe-jobs" are planned as denial-of-service
attacks. By bouncing the message you are helping the
attacker.
So, please, don't bounce SPAM.
Thanks
CS-DNA
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Ausatco says about MailWasher:
==================
I have been using the betas for months and have not had a false positive (ie, a false indication of spam). I get 200 spams a day. MW has cut that down to about 20.
==================
That means that 10% of the spam is getting through.
I use POPFile to sort into "spam" or "not spam" categories. I get roughly 1% misclassified. Considerably more are false negatives rather than false positives.
With about 100 messages a day, 75% of them spam, a spam message gets through almost every day and a desired message is called spam once or twice a week.
It looks as though MailWasher has chosen their thresholds to have fewer false positives at the cost of far more false negatives.
Take your pick.
==================
I have been using the betas for months and have not had a false positive (ie, a false indication of spam). I get 200 spams a day. MW has cut that down to about 20.
==================
That means that 10% of the spam is getting through.
I use POPFile to sort into "spam" or "not spam" categories. I get roughly 1% misclassified. Considerably more are false negatives rather than false positives.
With about 100 messages a day, 75% of them spam, a spam message gets through almost every day and a desired message is called spam once or twice a week.
It looks as though MailWasher has chosen their thresholds to have fewer false positives at the cost of far more false negatives.
Take your pick.
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Since I wrote my last post I've tweaked my filters on MW. Down to about 5 a day now, which MW is not certain of and are presented for review. The rest are deleted at the server. That's the bit I like.
AA
AA
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I read of a spam filter (Under development? Proposed?) that uses a user/P2P shared database of spam mail. The more a piece of spam gets marked as such by users more aggressive the autodelete is.
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As CS_DNA says:-
Definitely do not bounce...
The vast majority of spam now comes with forged sender addresses, of both the entirely fictitious and perfectly legitimate type. The latter being a mix of addresses harvested from various places, and addresses either guessed as being legitimate or guessed at random and which turn out to be legitimate. Either way, it's only a miniscule proportion for which a bounce would go to the right place.
So all bounces do is (a) clog up everybody's systems with more junk that people don't wan't; and (b) worry and irritate the recipient, if it's forged and happens to have a legitimate address....
So what to do...
Well [now that you've got me started on one of my pet peeves
]
Most of the so-called "solutions" that we are seeing today are more or less sophisticated versions of "hitting the delete key". Doing this, in howerver a sophisticated fashion, provides zero, absolutely zero incentive for either the spammer to stop or the people who are facilitating him (inadvertantly sometimes, for sure) to stop providing him with services.
I contend that:
Until the cost of sending spam, in terms of inconvenience as well as financially, starts being passed back to the spammer (or at least his ISP or other faciltators), nothing will improve and indeed the situation will get worse.
Well there are techniques which are available which do actually start passing the cost back towards the spammmer (or those who are aiding and abetting him.) The problem with them is that they involve a certain amount of short-term pain, for longer term gain -- which is why few people deploy them. The "auto delete" functionality that we mostly see is the opposite extreme: long-term pain (there is no incentive for the spammer to stop) versus short term gain (the spam seems to go away.) It doesn't go away, of course, it just seems to and that's why this approach is just storing up trouble for the future.
Well, enough of that rant for now, if anybody is actually interested in "Plan B" post a message and I'll followup with a little more detail. Off course, as in a lot of things, this issue tends to gnerate a lot of heat as well as light with factions polarising at opposite ends of the spectrum -- although I have fairly striongs views (you never guessed, did you) my main concern is that people make informed decisions, rather than ill-informed knee-jerk reactions that I'm seeing from some people recently on this issue (not on Prune, I hasten to add 
)
Definitely do not bounce...
The vast majority of spam now comes with forged sender addresses, of both the entirely fictitious and perfectly legitimate type. The latter being a mix of addresses harvested from various places, and addresses either guessed as being legitimate or guessed at random and which turn out to be legitimate. Either way, it's only a miniscule proportion for which a bounce would go to the right place.
So all bounces do is (a) clog up everybody's systems with more junk that people don't wan't; and (b) worry and irritate the recipient, if it's forged and happens to have a legitimate address....
So what to do...
Well [now that you've got me started on one of my pet peeves
]Most of the so-called "solutions" that we are seeing today are more or less sophisticated versions of "hitting the delete key". Doing this, in howerver a sophisticated fashion, provides zero, absolutely zero incentive for either the spammer to stop or the people who are facilitating him (inadvertantly sometimes, for sure) to stop providing him with services.
I contend that:
Until the cost of sending spam, in terms of inconvenience as well as financially, starts being passed back to the spammer (or at least his ISP or other faciltators), nothing will improve and indeed the situation will get worse.
Well there are techniques which are available which do actually start passing the cost back towards the spammmer (or those who are aiding and abetting him.) The problem with them is that they involve a certain amount of short-term pain, for longer term gain -- which is why few people deploy them. The "auto delete" functionality that we mostly see is the opposite extreme: long-term pain (there is no incentive for the spammer to stop) versus short term gain (the spam seems to go away.) It doesn't go away, of course, it just seems to and that's why this approach is just storing up trouble for the future.
Well, enough of that rant for now, if anybody is actually interested in "Plan B" post a message and I'll followup with a little more detail. Off course, as in a lot of things, this issue tends to gnerate a lot of heat as well as light
with factions polarising at opposite ends of the spectrum -- although I have fairly striongs views (you never guessed, did you) my main concern is that people make informed decisions, rather than ill-informed knee-jerk reactions that I'm seeing from some people recently on this issue (not on Prune, I hasten to add )
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OK, OK
It's all a bit BOFH-ish, which is why it upset some people, but I figure short term pain for long term gain.
I've got grief from (1) a spammer blasting one server by relaying through an open relay (25,000 and counting last time I looked
) and (2) somebody trying to setup a mailserver who doesn't know what an MX record is , so I may not get to this tonight... 
It's all a bit BOFH-ish, which is why it upset some people, but I figure short term pain for long term gain.
I've got grief from (1) a spammer blasting one server by relaying through an open relay (25,000 and counting last time I looked
) and (2) somebody trying to setup a mailserver who doesn't know what an MX record is , so I may not get to this tonight...
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I'm getting over 100 spams a day now and still having to browse them to net the odd 'real' email. RTFM, please let me know of your anti-spam program...
(we girls don't need extra inches!)
IronHen
(we girls don't need extra inches!)
IronHen
Cunning Artificer
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If it cost even a tiny amount of money to send an e-mail then it wouldn't hurt the genuine user like you or I very much, but might make spamming uneconomical. In the meantime the only defence is for everyone of us to change our e-mail addresses regularly and bulk mail everyone in our address books with the new one.
Hang on.... that can't be right...
**************************
Through difficulties to the cinema
BTW: Bouncing DOES work with unsolicited snail mail. Just send the envelope back - no need to put anything in it.
Hang on.... that can't be right...
**************************
Through difficulties to the cinema
BTW: Bouncing DOES work with unsolicited snail mail. Just send the envelope back - no need to put anything in it.
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RTFM, if there's an effective way to make spammers PAY, I'm interested.
In the meantime, at 200 per day, I fell compelled to look after number 1 with simple deleting from the server. It may be head-in-the-sand, but until something better comes along that is not too esoteric, it will do me.
I'd like to hear about your method.
AA
In the meantime, at 200 per day, I fell compelled to look after number 1 with simple deleting from the server. It may be head-in-the-sand, but until something better comes along that is not too esoteric, it will do me.
I'd like to hear about your method.
AA
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Don't like the idea of charging for emails at all Blacksheep.
Regardless of the problems with spamming we don't want ot go down that road.
Must admit I did have a problem with spam but then I went and got my own email account with oneandone.co.uk and since then I've little or no spam. When I was using BT and Freeserve etc. for my email crikey I appeared a lot more popular.
Also I use a hotmail account for sites which require an email address but that I don't want anything from, works a treat and if you don't buy any extra space from hotmail they all fall off the bottom when it gets full.
Regardless of the problems with spamming we don't want ot go down that road.
Must admit I did have a problem with spam but then I went and got my own email account with oneandone.co.uk and since then I've little or no spam. When I was using BT and Freeserve etc. for my email crikey I appeared a lot more popular.
Also I use a hotmail account for sites which require an email address but that I don't want anything from, works a treat and if you don't buy any extra space from hotmail they all fall off the bottom when it gets full.