Women in Technology

Article:		The Fight Against Spam, Part 3
Subject:		apple's stupid logic and bouncing
Date:		2004-05-26 13:47:33
From:		mrbs
I really liked Part 2... but I think this one fell short. One really important thing to note is that they made a really annoying choice in mail.app for panther... the junk mail filtering acts like an invisible rule at the end of your list (in jaguar it was a visible rule that you could place wherever you wanted), so if you file your messages (using the 'stop applying rules') the junk filter won't do anything at all. You need to make your own rule and put it in the front (or in the middle, depending on how you're doing something) and say If Junk; if sender is not in my address book; if sender is not in my previous recipients THEN move to Junk. Also, bouncing spam doesn't help anything. It might help get you off a legitimate mailing list, or a really really rudimentary spam list, but more than 99% of all spam has forged headers. You're going to be bouncing the message to some poor schlub, or often times you're flooding the inboxes of anti-spam organizations. You're doubling the effect your spam has on the network and passing on the annoyance to someone else. Just don't do it. ~BS

Showing messages 1 through 5 of 5.

• apple's stupid logic and bouncing
  2004-05-26 17:09:29  FJ de Kermadec | [View]
  
  
  Hi !
  
  First of all, thanks for your feedback ! :-)
  
  As you can see, I had included a warning in the article about the "Bounce" function, for the situation you are describing. However, in many cases, "Bounce" can be a life saver. Like any "fight back" function, it just needs to be used carefully.
  
  F.J.
• apple's stupid logic and bouncing
  2004-06-17 08:56:38  beneden [View]
  
  
  Hi,
  
  What you mean by "careful" bouncing still escapes me.
  
  Good article - especially for light/home users. Anyone with an internet presence of any kind WILL end up with more spam than client-based filtering can deal with.
  
  (For instance, you may cloak your email all you want, but it's in all messages you send out - all you need is a trojan on the receiving computer and your address is disseminated..)
  
  Spam is a scourge, but there are tools that can help manage it. Having a good web host running software like Spamassassin will reduce your spam flood to a trickle.
  
  Ben
• Bouncing
  2004-06-17 09:06:14  FJ de Kermadec | [View]
  
  
  Hi !
  
  First of all, thank you for your kind words, I really do appreciate them ! :-)
  
  The "Bounce" function can be, as we see in the article, a great help, by sending to your correspondents a message that states that their mail couldn't be delivered.
  
  However, two things can make the "Bounce" function less or not effective :
  
  1. The SPAMmer doesn't check for bounced messages. In that case, bouncing them won't help you and will just increase bandwidth consumption on your network.
  
  2. In some instances of specially crafted SPAM messages, your mail provider may be tempted to "fill in" your address in the bounced message or add other information that will, in fact, reveal your address to a SPAMmer and/or confirm that you received the SPAM. This of course supposes that the SPAMmer or the computers he uses take the time to read all bounces, which may or may not be the case.
  
  All in all, "Bounce" is an extremely powerful feature. It should however not be used without carefully weighting the adverse effects it can have -- it is up to you to see if the mail you received will fall into one of the two categories we just saw.
  
  Let me know if this helps !
  
  F.J.
• Bouncing
  2004-06-18 09:14:11  beneden [View]
  
  
  Cher François:
  
  AFAIK, hardly any spammers (if any) check for invalid email addresses in this way, by keeping track of bounces. Hardly practical/worth their time and resources. The sender/reply-to address in today's spam is either bogus... or indeed a valid one - belonging to a randomly selected individual from spammer's email list. (This is called joe-jobbing and happens to me regularly.)
  
  I see a point in auto-bouncing all email that's classified as spam and auto-deleted at the same time. This precaution is, however, quite costly in bandwith. In my experience, when spam filtering is well set up, the only possible candidates for false positives are automated messages and mailing lists. Both won't either care about your bounce at all - or will proceed with taking the recipient off their list.
  
  Best,
  
  Ben
  
  Photojournalist and Wedding Photographer, London, UK

• apple's stupid logic and bouncing
  2004-05-26 17:08:28  FJ de Kermadec | [View]
  
  
  Hi !
  
  First of all, thanks for your feedback ! :-)
  
  As you can see, I had included a warning in the article about the "Bounce" function, for the situation you are describing. However, in many cases, "Bounce" can be a life saver. Like any "fight back" function, it just needs to be used carefully.
  
  F.J.