Spam bounce message

[Julian Field]

At 23:32 28/09/2002, you wrote:
>Yeh but what I mean is that people have asked before if Mailscanner can
>reject a SPAM message

Which is why I wrote the "bounce" action in the first place.

I think I'm missing your point or something...

>  and though this is the MTA's job, this would be a
>way to give those people who want to reject the ability to do it from
>Mailscanner.  True it's not a real reject but it does give the
>appearance.
>
>Also my experience has been that users never read the reasons for a
>rejection or bounce. Yeh it can help a postmaster, but just getting a
>user to talk to their email admin is a task even with a rejection or
>bounce message tells them to.  What they tend to do is call the person
>they are trying to email and say they can't email them even though the
>bounce message tells them to talk to their email admin.  The recipient
>then believes it a problem their email account and you have to get
>involved.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Matt [mailto:hciss at HCIWS.COM]
>Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2002 3:12 PM
>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Spam bounce message
>
>
>If the SMTP server the spammer connected to accepted the message it was
>already marked quite likely as valid unless they used an open relay.
>Usually the return address on a SPAM does not work anyway though.  Also,
>just in case of a false hit you would want an explanation to a
>legitimate sender.
>
>Matt
>
> > I've been playing with this in 4.0 and was wondering... Wouldn't it
> > better for MS to bounce back the message in such a way that it appears
>
> > to be a Mailer-Daemon rejection message?  Basically making it appear
> > to have come from the MTA?  I wouldn't think spammers are going to
> > look that closely at the header and see that it's not a real bounce.
> > If the bounce message appears to be a rejection then "maybe" and I do
> > mean maybe, the address would get removed from their list.

--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ