Roshi said:
spam filters should include bouncing back of the emails to the servers
back
so that the server thinks of it as a non existing email address and
remove
the entry it self
One, that doesn't work because the bounceback message does NOT go back
to the spammer. What, you thought spammers used a real e-mail address?
Or that their custom mailers won't alter the Return-Path header? Or
that they don't trojanize PCs ran by idiots to run their mailer daemons
there?
Two, check your contract with with your ISP. It is likely that you are
not allowed to run servers, which includes mail servers. It is likely
that your bounceback messages will be seen as coming from an [emulated]
mail server so you are violating your contract.
Three, you think that anyone getting the bounceback message can't
discern that it came from a end-user client rather than from a mail
server? Instead you tell the spammer (if any actually look at
bounceback messages) that they hit a valid e-mail account because you
then returned a bogus bounceback message (from your MUA instead of your
MTA).
Four, Mailwasher includes a bounceback feature but every experienced
user recommends against using it. Hmm, I wonder why. Bouncing only
works if the sender hasn't faked or forged the return address and
follows through as implied upon receiving a bounce. The fallacy is that
SPAMers are going to remove the bounced addresses from their lists.
Instead the spammer can recognize the bogus bounce message and decide to
take retaliation against you (or, more probably, against you as a
Mailwasher or spam-bouncing product user). Fortunately you are lucky in
that spammers don't bother monitoring bounces.
Five, since the bounceback may not target the spammer but rather an slam
an innocent, your unintelligently routed bounceback messages are
themselves spam - so YOU become part of the spam problem! Put another
way, you've had your email address "borrowed" by a SPAMer and you didn't
mind all those bounces that made their way into your Inbox, huh?
Six, you generate additional traffic to further consume Internet
bandwidth and again you exascerbate the spam problem. You are really so
stupid as to think the spammer will ever see your bounceback message?
What, you think they really monitor their relay, bulk mailer, or
trojanized PCs for bounceback messages? In the few cases where bouncing
might effect reduction, it doesn't outweigh your overal insult to the
Internet - unless you are going through every spam message to
interrogate the headers and do the investigation to determine if the
sender might be a responsible spammer. Otherwise, using a shotgun to
push a thumbtack into the wall isn't very good for the wall.
Seven, you hating terrorists and becoming as extreme as they are is not
good for society. You becoming a vigilante and attacking spammers
(which really means you attack their domains which may not know yet
about the spammer or attacking innocents because you send your
"bounceback spam" at innocents) doesn't help, either. Extremists are
never good for the community.
Eight, passing the buck [of responsibility] back to the spammer for you
slamming an innocent with your "bounceback spam" doesn't wash logically.
You getting an apple that you KNOW has had razor blades inserted into it
and then passing it off to a kid on Halloween does *not* eliminate your
responsibility in contributing to the criminal act. "Hey, I didn't
booby trap the apple. Someone else did that and I just knowingly passed
it on." Yeah, right. I haven't heard anyone using the excuse that they
weren't guilty for murdering someone because Remington was the one that
built the bullet and they just passed it on to their victim. Be a
responsible netizen.
Nine, you already wasted the bandwidth, time, CPU cycles, and disk space
to download the message (or maybe just its headers) to determine that it
was spam. So why waste more bandwidth, time, CPU cycles, and someone
else's disk space for a bounceback message instead of the really easy,
immediate, and low resource cost solution of just deleting the damn
thing?
You are deluded in thinking bouncebacks are a good way to handle spam.
You didn't think it through. Maybe you were really thinking of
graylisting (which is done at the MTA and not at the MUA), but it has
its problems, too
(
http://email.about.com/cs/spamgeneral/a/tmpfailing.htm), as in
requiring more disk space on the sending mail servers to queue up the
pending outbound messages.
