White Hat Admistrators - Email SPAMers?

are they worse than the black hatters?

[old_expat]

Every day I get dozens of email messages in my inbox from folks who I would guess think they are doing me a favor .. or perhaps not thinking or even caring about what they're doing.

It's those "Cannot Deliver" messages generated as a result of SPAMers forging my email address to do their dastardly deeds.

So then an admin lets his server bounce these messages back to me .. usually along with the original SPAM message.

The result is more secondary SPAM than original SPAM.

Sure, I can filter it, but why should it even be allowed to hit the ether? Think of the wasted bandwidth.

Is there something I'm missing or shouldn't admin folks be trying to reduce SPAM rather than adding to the burden?

[bill]

You could implement an SPF record which may help those Administrators to spot those types of mails.

[old_expat]

Hi Bill,

Can you explain that in laymen's terms?

[pageoneresults]

More on SPF in the first part of this topic...

EOC - Email Optimization Consultant
[webmasterworld.com...]

[piatkow]

Its still spam, report it.

[old_expat]

Well, I did *some* reading on the SPF, but it is very confusing. I have no idea what or where a DNS Zone is or how I could get a record into it if I was able to create an accurate record.

Then when I read that most email senders don't subscribe to the protocol, it brings me back to my original question.

As far as reporting the bounces as SPAM, I doubt that any will be read.

But my post actually questions the responsibilities of mail sender admins and how they should have a responsibility. The SPF seems to me to be little more than a band-aid.

[bcc1234]

But my post actually questions the responsibilities of mail sender admins and how they should have a responsibility.

It's a difference of how MTAs handle messages to non-existing accounts or other immediate problems with delievery.

For example, qmail would accept the message and then send a bounce, while postfix would simply refuse to accept the message in the first place and make the bounce notification a responsibility of the original sending MTA.

There is not much that could be done aside from changing the MTA.