[postmaster@blackhole.com: Unsolicited commercial email rejected]

Mon Oct 13 12:33:20 IST 2003

Julian Field,

thanks for responding:

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 10:54:51AM +0100, Julian Field wrote:
> How very polite :-)

Please excuse me for using clear language but I am really tired to see
so many of these false spam notifications. And this notification was in
no way polite either.  I haven't sent the spam. And the authors of this
software most likely knew that most if not all [1] recipients of these
messages haven't sent the spams either.

> Please read
> www.sng.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailscanner/reject.html

I have read this before. This does not address my problem. I haven't
sent any messages to those who sent me the notification (before). Neither
spam nor anything else.

> It sounds as if your email address is being used by a spammer as a fake 
> "From:" address in mail they are sending, so that you get the bounce 
> messages and not the spammer.

Indeed, this is the problem as I have explained in my response.

> If you had been rather more polite in your mail, I would feel rather more 
> inclined to explain this in detail. But you weren't, so I'm not.

And you think this is polite when you suggest I do not understand the
technicals issues, needing technical explanations from you?  It is
perfectly clear for me how this message was generated. It is even
explained in my message.

Do you really want to let me assume that you do not see the consequences
of your software? That you are going to destroy the mail infrastructure
which is currently aggressively targeted by spammers to an even greater
extent by flooding innocent victims with absolutely useless messages? And
do you really fail to understand that such messages are particularly
useless if they do not provide the headers?

Sigh!

See, any system that automatically sends emails should do this in
a responsible way, i.e. the recipient should be related either to
the institution sending out the email or to the email the system is
responding to. If you send emails automatically to people who never had
any contact with you before, then your system is generating unsolicited
emails. This is as bad as the original spam. Not everything which claims
to fight spam is a good thing, in particular not if it itself generates
unsolicited emails.

Do you have ever thought about the people receiving these messages?
Should I silently accept and delete them? Or should I fight them like the
original spams themselves? My mailbox is currently primarily flooded with
such notifications because most of the regular spam is already sorted out.

Please think about the implications of the Mailscanner software.

Andreas Borchert
http://www.andreas-borchert.de/

[1] Please show me a spam that you got in recent times with an envelope
sender that points to the real sender. It is pretty hard to find
such cases.

> 
> At 10:35 13/10/2003, Andreas Borchert wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >today I received the attached message from a network of black-hole.com,
> >apparently using some software distributed by mailscanner.com.
> >
> >It falsely claims that
> >
> >   ``Our UCE (spam) detectors have been triggered by a message you
> >   sent:- To: stuart at acutekplastics.com, sue at acutekplastics.com,
> >   sunshine at acutekplastics.com, syso at acutekplastics.com,
> >   ter at acutekplastics.com, terri at acutekplastics.com,
> >   terry at acutekplastics.com, thomas at acutekplastics.com,
> >   tina at acutekplastics.com, tj at acutekplastics.com, tom at acutekplastics.com
> >   Subject: UNLIMITED LEADS juovduamm a
> >   Date: Mon Oct 13 03:59:55 2003
> >   This message has been rejected. The detector that triggered is
> >   SpamAssassin.
> >
> >   The content of your message indicates that it is probably spam e-mail,
> >   which is why it has been rejected.''
> >
> >I have never sent such a message. It should be common knowledge now
> >that spams use faked sender addresses regularly. Sending out false
> >claims like this is just simply annoying and helps nobody as you even
> >fail to provide the headers of the email with the faked address.
> >
> >The distribution of such ``spam fighting'' software and its application
> >are simply irresponsible. This piece of crap simply moves the spam load
> >from the original recipients to another set of innocent victims. However,
> >it is much harder to fight against the garbage you are generating than
> >to fight against the original spam producers.
> >
> >Do you expect me to eat this garbage or should I block your networks
> >like those of spam hosters? I hope that this can be avoided and that
> >common sense returns.
> >
> >Andreas Borchert
> >http://www.andreas-borchert.de/
> >Return-Path: <>
> >Delivered-To: afb-tbkrmde67 at andreas-borchert.de
> >Received: (qmail 15733 invoked by uid 0); 13 Oct 2003 09:03:33 -0000
> >Received: from mail.black-hole.com (216.185.192.6)
> >  by mellifont.in-ulm.de with SMTP; 13 Oct 2003 09:03:33 -0000
> >Received: from noc3.bhi.com (noc3.bhi.com [216.185.192.31]) by 
> >blackhole.com
> > (Rockliffe SMTPRA 6.0.6) with ESMTP id <B0033854681 at mail.black-hole.com> 
> >for <tbkrmde67 at andreas-borchert.de>;
> > Mon, 13 Oct 2003 04:06:16 -0500
> >Received: (from root at localhost)
> >        by noc3.bhi.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) id h9D8xto11273;
> >        Mon, 13 Oct 2003 03:59:55 -0500
> >Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 03:59:55 -0500
> >Message-Id: <200310130859.h9D8xto11273 at noc3.bhi.com>
> >From: "MailScanner" <postmaster at blackhole.com>
> >To: tbkrmde67 at andreas-borchert.de
> >Subject: Unsolicited commercial email rejected
> >X-MailScanner: generated
> >MIME-Version: 1.0
> >
> >Our UCE (spam) detectors have been triggered by a message you sent:-
> >  To: stuart at acutekplastics.com, sue at acutekplastics.com, 
> >sunshine at acutekplastics.com, syso at acutekplastics.com, 
> >ter at acutekplastics.com, terri at acutekplastics.com, 
> >terry at acutekplastics.com, thomas at acutekplastics.com, 
> >tina at acutekplastics.com, tj at acutekplastics.com, tom at acutekplastics.com
> >  Subject: UNLIMITED LEADS juovduamm a
> >  Date: Mon Oct 13 03:59:55 2003
> >This message has been rejected. The detector that triggered is
> >SpamAssassin.
> >
> >The content of your message indicates that it is probably spam e-mail,
> >which is why it has been rejected.
> >
> >We do not accept unsolicited commercial (spam) e-mail and actively
> >work to stop it. If you are sending spam and continue to do so, your
> >Internet Service Provider may be contacted and requested to close your
> >account.
> >
> >If you have any questions about this, or you believe you have received
> >this message in error, please contact the site system administrators.
> >
> >--
> >MailScanner
> >Email Virus Scanner
> >www.mailscanner.info
> >Mailscanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
> 
> -- 
> Julian Field
> www.MailScanner.info
> MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support
> 
> PGP footprint: EE81 D763 3DB0 0BFD E1DC  7222 11F6 5947 1415 B654
> 