Forum Moderators: phranque
Now, though, I'm finding that bouncing has not had any appreciable effect on my spam load, and a big part of the processing time for my Mailwasher inbox is bouncing. If I delete only, I can dump hundreds of messages in seconds; if I use the bounce feature, it takes FAR longer.
With spam and virus loads setting new records, speedy processing is a must. So, a two part question - does anyone see any merit in bouncing, and in Mailwasher Pro is there a way to turn off bouncing for the "Origin Blacklist" e-mails? I've fixed my own filter and blacklist options, but I can't find the bounce switch for the spam list e-mails.
And I do not see a point from the spammers point of view to sort out all the bounced e-mails. They send out millions of e-mails every day. The amout of work would take to eliminate all bounced e-mail would overcome the amount of time and bandwidth they would use to send those e-mails that would bounce.
"View", "Filter Sidebar", "Blacklist" tab, "Options" button, uncheck "Mark Blacklisted Items for Bouncing".
Post-beta, the reporting feature's supposed to stop blacklists from reaching your server. Looking forward to seeing it run.
I use bouncing to annoy coworkers, friends, & family who obsessively forward their jokes of the day. ;)
[edited by: skipfactor at 2:52 pm (utc) on Sep. 3, 2003]
Mailwasher touts bouncing as a unique feature and benefit. To me, it looks like the only spammers it will help with are "accidental" spammers, i.e., respectable mailers (using Lyris or other serious list management software) who have somehow gotten your address in their database. These guys aren't the problem, though.
Anyone know how to disable the connect errors?
I've been so p*ss*d off at some local ISP that bounced Sobig.F virus infected email to me. And I'm entitled to it because I'm on a Mac and thus can't get the thing in the first place.
You can only in good faith bounce spam and virus infected email if - and only if - the IP-number resolves to the same domain name as the one the spam purports to originate at.
I use bouncing to annoy coworkers, friends, & family who obsessively forward their jokes of the day. ;)
A spammer once decided to use my domain to spoof his from fields when sending out a huge mass mailing. I suddenly began to recieve hundreds of returned emails which overwhelmed my inbox, drove up my bandwidth useage and was just plain horrible. Fortunately they were all to one alias and my email host was able to block that alias at the server, but not all hosting companies can (or will) do this. So please don't return spam unless you're 100% sure it's going to the person who sent it.
Where spammers have used an innocent victim's address and set it as the return address I think the victim's main concern is likely to be the vast amount of "Don't spam me!" messages from people who thought that they were the spammer. In addition, the innocent victim will also receive a vast quantity of actual bounces from genuinely invalid e-mail addresses. Where the bounce feature is demonstrably useful is where you are trying to get off a legitimate business's mailing list that you are having trouble opting out of.
That being said there is a circle of "ethical" spammers (if you can call them that), who do in fact honour unsubscribe requests. Though given that as receivers of the e-mail you have no way to know this, you may well just be signing up for more spam. However they still may be sending the e-mail from a forged address.
For bouncing I'd recommend the Remote/Local Bounce option. Found under Tools >> Accounts >> Properties >> select Bouncing and Outgoing Mail at the top >> Advanced Bouncing Options >> Bouncing Details >> select "Use Remote with Local Back Up".
This may slow down the bounce process slightly, and also will cause error pop ups. To disable the errors click Tools >> Errors Digest >> Options >> remove the check from "Show Bounce Failure Notifications".
These errors are often just from forged accounts as when Mailwasher uses the Remote Bounce option the system performs an MX DNS look-up on the hostname of the destination e-mail address. If the MX look-up fails, the bounce is aborted. For each MX record returned, the system attempts to send the message directly top that SMTP server. If any server returns a permanent failure code (5xx), the bounce is aborted.
An MX server is a Mail Exchange server and MailWasherPro tries to obtain this from various fields (from, reply-to, etc)of an email. A DNS lookup reqeust is performed on the various host names to determine which mail server is present to use for the bounce. It will fail if the headers are forged.
If there are MX servers present but none were available to connect to, the system performs a local SMTP send instead. If there are MX servers present and all of them return a temporary error code (4xx), the system performs a local SMTP send. Otherwise the bounce is aborted.
This makes your bounces more accurate, and also causes less traffic on the ISP SMTP server.
"Tools", "Options", "Spam Databases", uncheck "Display e-mails that are in the known database"?
Anyone know how to disable the connect errors?
Are you receiving CFS database errors often?
No, not at all. I'm on a satellite connection in the mountains & it's been a foggy, rainy summer. Is there a way to disable mail server connect errors?
Thanks for popping in to answer questions. Mailwasher filters were a big help w/ Sobig. :)
Here is their response - and - it worked :)
Go to Tools>>Options>>set the Heuristic Strength to none. Also go to Tools>>Options>>Spam databases>>remove the tick from Tools>>Options>>Spam databases>>"Check the origin of the email against DNS spam Blacklist servers".
Can't verify that it is true because I know too little about mail headers, but it was said that the bounces from mailwasher don't appear as actually being a true bounce from a server and don't fool any spammer.
Also, said that since most headers are forged anyway that the bounce never reaches the true spammer, but instead goes to the poor victim whose address was spoofed and I sure get a lot of those!
